HABEAS
CORPUS
in
the Cramphorn Theatre
14.01.12
Not
easy, playing farce. How much more difficult for this early Bennett,
where the farce, hilarious as it is with its comic-postcard
characters, is just a facade,
a front for a deeper piece altogether.
Janet
Tomkins' production for Full Circle went at it with the simplest
staging and admirable pace –
three chairs, no waiting.
The
quick-fire dialogue meant that some of the wit was lost –
always a problem with Bennett - and sometimes the poignancy of the
poetry was drowned in effects, like the pier-end piece with its glove
puppets and surreal soundscape, or the wartime verses.
But
the quality of the writing, and energetic work from the younger
actors especially, made this an enjoyable evening. And some things
worked really well –
the "Liverpool" double take, the Buffalo number. But
no excuse for trousers dropped clumsily –
a staple of any farce worth its salt.
Dhugal
Fulton was a watchable doctor, effortlessly mastering the style and
the wordy passages, with Amanda Whiteford imposing as his wardrobe of
a wife. Kate Austen was excellent as the dowdy daughter; David
Anderson's Dennis was amusing, though too dim and too demotic for my
taste. Penelope Lambton wrung every laugh out of Mrs Swabb, the
omniscient chorus who pulls the whole farrago together, and Jeremy
Battersby worked hard at the Priest with Five Fingers, audaciously
steering his Chopper across the Cramphorn stage.
Though his reading was camper and coarser than necessary, I felt.
The
cast was completed by Teri Levett's snooty Delia, Emmy van Beek as
her nubile daughter, Christopher Poke as the falsie fitter, Alan
Thorley as the depressed Purdue [the actual hanging left to our
imagination] and David Johnson as the four-foot Casanova Sir Percy
Shorter.
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