Writers: Ethan Dean-Richards and Kalman Dean-Richards
Director: Yusuf Niazi
Ethan Dean-Richards and Kalman Dean-Richards’ dark political farce, The Good Landlord, critiques what they see as the corruption and greed underlying the UK’s private rental market. The four-hander, directed by Yusuf Niazi, strives for a kind of anarchic, Ortonesque bravado. However, laughs are scarce, and the play takes potshots without offering much of a solution to Britain’s housing crisis. Critiquing landlordism surely requires a more constructive response than “you can’t get your money back, but you can make the bastards pay,” which essentially sums up the work’s theme.
It is Jack’s (Jason Adam) 33rd birthday, but things are not going well. His girlfriend has walked out, leaving him with £3K in rent arrears and a gift-wrapped power drill as a parting gift. Given that he is a lazy, depressive, alcoholic who signs his name with an emoji consisting of genitals, one wonders why she hung around as long as she did. Worse, Jack’s dodgy, money-grabbing landlord, Marianne (Julia Winwood), has just served the man with an eviction notice from the windowless flat, threatening to put him and his sofa-surfing, panic-attack-prone pal, Shaun (Blayne Kelly), on the streets.
The duo hatch a scheme to sublet a cupboard at a vastly inflated price to cover the overdue rent and entice Jack’s girlfriend to return. But who would be “desperate, fool, idiot, twat, wanker” enough to rent a cupboard, and what will Jack’s determination to be ‘The Good Landlord’ look like in practice?
Enter Sony (Caroline Grey), who has been living in her car for three months, has £100K in compensation due from a previous landlord, and sees the cubby-hole as a way of “slowly moving back inside”. A complication arises when Sony turns out to be anything but the naïve pushover the men anticipated. Jack’s attempts to paint over the mould may not be enough to placate her increasingly well-informed demands. Anticipate twists, turns, locked bathrooms, a kidnapping, and an ominous gas leak.
One supposes Jack’s grimy cupboard in The Good Landlord is a metaphor for what the writers see as a rental system that enriches a few while leaving millions of others in substandard, unaffordable, precarious housing. Jack’s transformation into a landlord sees him become literally covered in vomit, suggesting what the writers think of the occupation. The piece wears its left-wing credentials on its sleeve, offering little in the way of an alternative solution. Fair enough, but agitprop in a clown’s outfit needs to be funny to work (think Accidental Death of an Anarchist), and this piece struggles mightily to raise more than an occasional forced titter.
Runs until 22 November 2025
