LADIES IN LAVENDER

LADIES IN LAVENDER

Hutton Players at Brentwood Theatre

15.11.17

A charming period piece, with two juicy roles for the more mature actress, two stock characters, and two cyphers for the younger generation.

Hutton Players – directed here by Patrick Stevens – field a fine sextet. The Widdington sisters, set all a-flutter by one Andrea Marowski, the Angel, the Greek God, the Polish violinist washed up on their Cornish shore, are Kathy Smith and Lindsey Crutchett, the latter especially moving as long suppressed desires are rekindled, and sibling rivalry upsets their tranquil lives. The scene in which she finishes reading The Little Mermaid as Andrea sleeps on the floor is beautifully judged.

Ruddy cheeked, outspoken Dorcas, who enjoys making a fuss and baking, is given a lovely comic performance by June Fitzgerald, while the local doctor, widower and amateur fiddler, is confidently played by William Wells.

The “artistic visitor”, sketching the shoreline and helping Andrea launch his performing career, is Louise Bridgman – her subplot scene with Dr Mead excellently played - and the enigmatic shipwrecked Pole himself is Lewis Symes.

The set is a delight – Aunt Elizabeth’s counterpane, the azure seascape simply suggested, the pre-war wireless, inhabited by Vernon Keeble-Watson’s BBC announcer, doubtless dinner-jacketed. Only the garden gate jars – better left to the imagination, perhaps.

There is, of course, much music, including a little of Nigel Hess’s splendid score for the film. It might have been better to record the first extract especially [without piano], but the frozen, spotlit solos for Andrea are very effective. Even for the unlikely Toccata of his London début, the sisters listening in at home, dressed in their Sunday best.

LADIES IN LAVENDER

LADIES IN LAVENDER

at the Cambridge Arts Theatre

30.06.12

It was only ever a slight piece – an improbable tale made into an old-fashioned film, lifted from mediocrity by music, landscape and two movingly subtle central performances.

Almost all of this is missing in Shaun McKenna's adaptation of Charles Dance's screenplay. Some of Nigel Hess's music survives. Liz Ashcroft's set is a wonder of compact invention: rocky Cornish sea-shore, parlour, bedroom, garden all shoe-horned onto a small stage. But it often seems cramped, with sightlines and blocking occasionally an issue.

Hayley Mills and Belinda Lang are charming and convincing as the spinster sisters, living in the shadow of war, whose sibling rivalry is a key element of the drama. But they lack charisma, Mills in particular delivers her lines beautifully but with little subtlety. Compared, say, with Abigail Thaw's rounded character as the bohemian artist Olga.

Good character support from Robert Duncan, a country doctor in the Robert Hardy mould, and Carol Mcready, wringing every ounce of rustic comedy from Dorcas, the housekeeper. Robert Rees was the young Polish violinist, shipwrecked on his way to the New World. Perfectly acceptable, but in the age of actor/musicians it seems a shame not to cast someone who could actually play the instrument.

Production values elsewhere were high, and Robin Lefevre's production had some lovely, poignant moments – opening and closing with concerts on the wireless, though I suspect that had I been able to see the fiddler above the roof I should have found it a little cheesy …