Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Published Monday 13 February 2006 at 15:45 by Pat Ashworth

A young Ian McKellen made his name in Nottingham in 1964 playing Sillitoe’s anti-hero, Arthur Seaton. The legacy of the Fifties city is its notorious weekend drinking culture, but the Raleigh factory that imprisoned Arthur is long gone, lending irony to his dream that it might be burned down in some great working-class rebellion.

Amanda Whittington’s adaptation is fast-moving, economical in scale and very evocative of the period. A single, flexible arrangement of opaque glass screens suggests elements of factory, street and pub and conveys a dinginess coloured only by scenes at Goose Fair, vividly conveyed in the lurching Cakewalk and the Ghost Train. Brenda’s back-street abortion is the more terrible for being only half-glimpsed behind the screen.

Peter McCamley is the cocky, swaggering Arthur, operating his lathe with contempt, working his easy charm on the factory girls and getting his thrills from near-discovery by the husbands of the married women he is seducing. We connive at his outrageous behaviour until he puts the boot into a victim in an act of sheer thuggery and then he really alienates us.

Nicky Rafferty gives a strong performance as Brenda, visibly able to convey the inner struggle she has not to be taken in by Arthur again. This is a culture that accepts men cheating on women but condemns women cheating on men, and Susan Hastie as the fresh and innocent Doreen gets some of the most pivotal lines.

A memorable show, thumping with Fifties music and as raw and angry as they come.