Hull Truck began life as a bunch of disaffected students with big ambitions and a van. So it is fitting that in its 30th anniversary year the company should revive Little Malcolm and his Struggle Against the Eunuchs, David Halliwell's tale of four art-school drop-outs who fancy themselves as the unacknowledged legislators of Huddersfield. Halliwell's serio-comic classic is set in a northern student squat on the coldest night of 1965, where there are no shillings left to feed the gas meter and the only thing burning is Malcolm Scrawdyke's idealism.
Malcolm is angry, in the unfocused way that underfed, freezing students generally are; and having been debarred from a life-drawing class, he decides that politics will become the platform for his egotistical ravings. Commandeering his cronies Ingham, Nipple and Wick to the politbureau of the Party of Dynamic Erection, Malcolm begins planning his putsch.
For the most part, Halliwell's play is a romantic, observational comedy of a quartet of students fooling around; like La Bohème with a Bolshevik agenda. But it progressively sours into a study of the development of personality cults and the incipient paranoia that feeds all dangerous dictators. "If this weren't a joke it would be a surreal nightmare," whimpers the poet Nipple from an upended tea chest, as a kangaroo court summarily expels him from the party.
Alice Bartlett's revival astutely observes the transition from rag-week rehearsal to savage reality, raking through universal truths about power and politics along the way. It's a mystery that Little Malcolm should be neglected today as a quaint northern period piece.
The balance of Halliwell's drama shifts from very, very funny to very, very nasty, and Bartlett's excellent cast negotiate the gear-changes with aplomb. Stuart Wade's scrawny Scrawdyke presents a loquaciously sinister little Hitler. Paul McCrink is superb as the persecuted poet Nipple, whose expulsion demonstrates how all revolutions lead to the greater intellect being crushed by the greater force of personality. Daniel O'Brien and Zach Lee are equally good value in their hairy wig and horrible bobble-hat as the incarnation of the docile, easily led masses. Little Malcolm may be out in the political wilderness, but it's a pleasure to see his play come back in from the cold.
• Until June 16. Box office: 01482 323638.
