REVIEW: Owners by Caryl Churchill at Jermyn Street 12 October – 11 November 2023



‘Monstrous misogyny and Thatcherite greed in a world of 20p mince’ ★★

Marion is avaricious and obsessed with building her property empire. A Thatcherite before Thatcherism was even a thing, she will stop at nothing to land her next property deal. Her aggressively misogynistic husband Clegg feels emasculated by his wife’s power and fantasises about murdering her.

Marion is aided in her property business by Worsely, whose delicate disposition and regular inept attempts at suicide don’t stop him colluding with Marion in her most manipulative plots to build her empire. When faced with the need to oust sitting tenants Lisa and Alec from a property Marion is trying to sell, things get tricky. Marion and Clegg have a complicated history with Lisa and Alec, who are expecting their third child.

Owners was first performed in 1972. Some plays survive the passage of time. Owners is not one of them. It is unclear why a play with such monstrous misogyny and that deals with so little empathy or understanding with mental health issues would be considered worth bringing back to audiences. And let’s gloss over the casual, jokey reference to child molestation.

The characters were one dimensional - not aided by Stella Powell-Jones’ loose direction which meant that any nuances that might have existed in the text were overlooked. The plot disintegrated into implausibility in the second half. It was hard to stay engaged or care about the characters.

Tom Morely made the most of his role as the whining but amoral Worsely. The triumph of the play was the fabulously ingenious set. Kudos to designer Cat Fuller.

Owners by Caryl Churchill, Jermyn Street Theatre, 12 October 2023 to 11 November 2023

Box Office https://www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk/show/owners/       

Performers: Laura Doddington, Ryan Donaldson, Mark Huckett, Pearl Marsland,

      Tom Morley, Boadicea Ricketts, Laura Woodhouse

Director Stella Powell-Jones

Reviewer: Srabani Sen

Srabani is a theatre actress and playwright. As an actress she has performed at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (The Globe), the Arcola, Southwark Playhouse, The Pleasance and numerous fringe theatres, in a range of roles from Shakespeare to plays by new and emerging writers. She has written several short and full length plays. Her play Tawaif was longlisted for the ETPEP Finborough award, and her play Vijaya was shortlisted for the Sultan Padamsee Playwrights Award in Mumbai.