On the Hogarth roundabout

There is little doubt that if Hogarth's paintings were given a soundtrack, it would be a raucous cacophony of sniggered asides, bawdy laughter, trumpeting pomposity, and salacious comehithers. So it is startling to discover that the Oddbodies Theatre Company has tackled the difficult task of bringing The Rake's Progress to life - not with a babbling cast of hundreds - but by turning it into a one-man show.

Not that Oddbodies should be underestimated in their capacity for deploying minimal casts to evoke a multitude of gruesomely challenging characters. Only three years ago, they delighted audiences with their performance of Richard III, which comprised one male and one female performer, and a drum kit with surprising dramatic range.

Paul Morel is the greysuited host for this particular evening, who jauntily accompanies the audience through the famous depiction of a young man who inherits a fortune, proceeds to squander it on women and gambling, and finally ends up dying in an asylum.

True to the spirit of Hogarth's eight paintings, the show's emphasis is as much on saucy proceedings at the edges of each work as at its centre, so it is through embodying the obscure characters that Morel ends up telling this teeming immorality tale.

Take, for instance, the first painting, where our heartless hero is celebrating his father's death by being measured for a new suit. Morel zooms in not on the Rake himself, nor on the tailors, nor his sobbing exgirlfriend, but on the dead father, absent as a corpse, but depicted in miniature in a darkened portrait above the fireplace.

The eccentric strands of narrative spun by the late miser and other characters, including a gluttonous clergyman, a lamplighter, a highwayman, a prostitute, and an art historian, prove spicily amusing - if not always side-splitting. Unlike Nick Dear's The Art of Success, the script offers no commentary on Hogarth's times, and leaves an after-taste of whimsical improvisation rather than of substantial comedy.

However, its intelligently experimental spirit lives true to the theatrical smorgasbord that is the BAC's Octoberfest. For this and other shows, adventurous theatregoers should immediately head Battersea-wards.

The Rake's Progress