19:00, Tue 8th – Sat 12th October 2013 at Corpus Playroom
Michaelmas Week 0

A horn honks and a man is flattened. Blood trails behind a van which splutters smoke and escapes with an assassin at its wheel. A weeping hairdresser clutches the man's body in his trembling hands. He wipes the tears from his eyes and follows the van's red path through the gloomy London streets...

'I've come about the room.'

The Ruffian on the Stair is a darkly comic nosedive into 1960s Britain that wades through the crime and grime of its suffocating capital city. Bleak, humorous, and provocative, Joe Orton's one-act play explores the darker side of the Swinging Sixties.

She's the tenant of the room. He's the ruffian on the stair.

'People are profoundly bad but irresistibly funny.' – Joe Orton