INVINCIBLE

INVINCIBLE
The Original Theatre Company and the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester
28.04.2016
for The Reviews Hub

Social class is at the heart of much British comedy. Ayckbourn, in particular, is master of the awkwardness, the inferiority complex, the snobbishness and the culture clash.
Torben Betts' play mines much the same seams. A bourgeois couple have downsized, thanks to the recession, from London to the terra incognita of the North. He's a redundant civil servant; she's a Buddhist, Marxist artist. Seeking to integrate into their new milieu, they invite a couple of neighbours round for drinks. She's a perma-tanned dental receptionist; he's a pot-bellied postman. And the scene is set for excruciating misunderstandings and increasingly heated exchanges of views. As, for instance, when anti-Blair Emily attacks the politicians who risk the lives of “misguided, ignorant” troops in foreign wars, only to find that Alan and Dawn are patriots, 110% behind our boys, not least because they have a personal link to the conflict. Or when Alan seeks Emily's expert view of his paintings.
They're stereotypes, of course, but beneath the clichés lie substantial back-stories, and it is these which will drive the second act into darker, more tragic territory.
Two events occur almost as soon as they arrive. A confessional moment sees them confused in a gloriously awful misunderstanding, beautifully handled in the writing, and in the performance here.
And this is the turning point, when deeper feelings come to the surface and the personal, and political, divide widens between the middle class, who will survive despite everything, and the “real people” whose lives are destroyed.
A fine quartet give rock solid, pin sharp performances.
Graeme Brookes is the boorish, boring Alan. He makes him a sympathetic character, despite his many faults. His great loves are his paintings, his cat Vince [for HMS Invincible, hence the play's title] and his glamorous wife Dawn [Kerry Bennett]. All of them taken from him by the new couple next door. Oliver, cricketer and civil servant is played by Alastair Whatley as a wet liberal who cannot share the socialist passions of his “highly strung” partner, beautifully characterized by Emily Bowker.
Christopher Harper's production skilfully suggests these two couples who speak without listening, whose relationships have become tired. The groupings for the many confrontations are brilliantly appropriate. The scenes, some of them quite short, are linked with patriotic airs, from Pomp and Circumstance to Sailing By. The audience are drawn in to these troubled lives, moving from knowing laughter to total involvement.
Victoria Spearing's convincing, lived-in design is introduced by a little model train, travelling through tiny wooden towns on the apron before coming to rest amongst the other toys, to be tidied away before the guests arrive.

THE PRIVATE EAR / THE PUBLIC EYE

THE PRIVATE EAR / THE PUBLIC EYE

Presented By The Original Theatre Company And Guildford’s Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

New Wolsey Theatre Ipswich

04.11.13

for The Public Reviews

Peter Shaffer's delightful double bill was a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic back in 1962.

We're back in the days of Ascot water heaters and coffee bars, in a theatrical landscape before the National and the kitchen sink, when revue was fashionable, and it was not unusual to enjoy two, or more, short plays in one evening.

Alastair Whatley's revival, the first in 50 years, captures the style remarkably well.

In The Public Eye, Bob lives alone in a dingy bedsit, opera posters on the wall, a curtained alcove for a wardrobe. He's geeky, shy and he comes from Warrington. But he's met this girl at a concert, and invited her back for supper. To help him with the Mateus Rosé and the [tinned] mushroom soup he's roped in Ted from the import/export office where they work.

They're as different as biscuits and cheese. Ted is cocksure, laddish, blessed with the gift of the gab. Could be Naughton's Alfie, or Orton's Mr Sloane. So it's no surprise that when Doreen turns up in her fake fur, she's more taken with the helpmate than the host, who does himself no favours by pumping Peter Grimes over the Wharfedales.

But the Behemoth stereo has another track up its LP sleeve, and the power of Puccini almost succeeds in seducing the pair of them, as she waits coyly on the bed and he sits stroking the ocelot.

This sequence is especially well done, a potent mix of the tender and the farcical.

Rupert Hill gives a bravura, amoral Ted, and Siobhan O'Kelly is excellent as the awkward guest – body language the most eloquent here.

The meal itself, a stylised fast-forward fantasy, is another highlight, with Stephen Blakely's Bob left a gooseberry at his own feast. His character is superbly observed; we can see that he desperately wants to break free from his anorak cocoon, but in the end his courage fails him, he tacitly concedes defeat to Ted, and, heart-rendingly, gouges a scratch across Madama Butterfly.

We're encouraged to see links between the two pieces, and, in a wonderfully choreographed brown-overalled ballet, the scene is changed after the interval, before our eyes – and Blakely's – as his lonely room becomes a swish accountancy practice, and, by means of a moustache, a mac and a pork-pie hat, he is reborn as a private detective.

In The Public Eye it's Julian's cross-talk with stuffy old accountant Charles [superb work from Jasper Britton] which provides the comedy gold, though it's the relationship between Charles and his young wife – very much a child of the 60s and another stylish characterization from O'Kelly – which is at the heart of the drama.

She's a free spirit, he's jealous, and it's up to Julian to heal their marriage with a cunning plan.

Shaffer has much to say about unhappiness, frustration and fidelity, but it's the beautifully judged masterclasses in farce that make these bitter-sweet period pieces such an enjoyable trip back to Shaftesbury Avenue in the Sixties.

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews

BIRDSONG

BIRDSONG

Original Theatre Company at the New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich

25.03.13

for The Public Reviews

Sebastian Faulks' classic novel, with its psychological insights and its graphic descriptions of trench and tunnel, was never going to be easy to adapt.

Perhaps that's why this first ever touring production is Rachel Wagstaffe's second attempt; she's abandoned the time frame of the printed page [retained in the West End version] for a much more free-flowing memory play.

It begins in 1916. There's a kind of curtain-raising ceilidh behind the lines, with hints of Oh What A Lovely War and some Journey's End jitters amongst the men.

Stephen Wraysford, a callow officer, reads rats' entrails and struggles to motivate his men. Flash-backs, seamlessly stage-managed, take him to Amiens in 1910 and his affair with a married woman which haunts him still in the heat of battle.

Wraysford is superbly drawn by Jonathan Smith, in his first major role since LAMDA. A humane officer, heartbroken by Isabelle's desertion. Drinking heavily, searching war-torn Amiens for traces of her, weeping at the kindness of her sister Jeanne [Poppy Roe], determined to escape the tunnel tomb. A deep, honest performance.

Sarah Jayne Dunn is his Isabelle – cool and aloof, passions kept in check, she is especially effective in the powerfully understated reunion scene.

As in the novel, the strongest, most sympathetic character is salt-of-the-earth Jack Firebrace, given memorable life here by Tim Treloar. We meet him first in a makeshift drag act, we grieve with him for the loss of his little son, feel his frustration as he tries to capture a likeness of Arthur Shaw [Liam McCormick], witness his final sacrifice as he wills Wraysford to escape into the daylight of peacetime.

Excellent support from a hardworking ensemble. Much doubling, notably the Captain Gray and René Azaire of Malcolm James, and Charlie G Hawkins as the Azaire boy and the 15-year-old recruit Tipper.

The music [Tim van Eyken] and the movement were both brilliantly done – hymn tunes, an accordion, a fiddle, all underpinning the action and the emotions – and the palpable claustrophobia of the mines, evoked so simply with a couple of lamps, a wooden brace and the sheer force of the performances.

A constantly moving production from Alastair Whatley, full of characters we can care about, ceaselessly reminding us of the savage futility of warfare. It's hard to imagine the book being better done as drama. Two minor niggles: the French accents, though subtly done in the main, are unnecessary. And the strange balletic seduction, violins throbbing on the soundtrack, seems to belong in a different show altogether.

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews