The Servant:
Barrett, the servant
Originally a 1948 novella by Robin Maugham, The Servant was adapted into an unforgettable 1963 film by Pinter and Losey. For his highly engrossing production for Birmingham Rep, Bill Alexander used Maugham's less elliptical 1966 stage version, but set the piece in 1948 so that it could be seen as symbolic of the changes in post-war class structure.
"Paul Copley as the servant, Barrett, plays the man more plainly than Dirk Bogard, whose smirking deference and prissy delivery are hard to banish from your mind. It's arguable, though, that Copley's sly, uncapped-up performance makes the point about class better. The play doesn't veer into the anarchy of the film, but it has its own atmosphere of insidious degradation."
- review by Paul Taylor in The Independent 1995