STEVIE

Heads First Theatre Company at Brentwood Theatre

17.10.10

In the drab clutter of the suburban 1950s, Ercol chairs, bakelite wireless, Stevie Smith lives out her weary life.

Hugh Whitemore's 1977 play is a clever blend of biography, autobiography and of course poetry. Most of the words are Stevie's own. The first act is heavy with narrative and reminiscence, but after the interval the drama moves up a gear. The Lion Aunt is frailer, ailing, and Stevie herself more and more fixated on death.

Marjorie Dunn's production flowed smoothly, following the poet's magpie mind and the daily trivia of tax bills, teacups, junket and York ham.

She had an A-list cast to work with. Glenda Abbott gave a masterclass performance as the Palmers Green poet. She relished the set pieces – her visit to the Palace, the bulrushes, the Tintoretto – but also excelled in her exchanges with her aunt, and with her suburban suitor Freddie. He was played by Alan Thorley, who was also an interviewer and a kind of narrator; his was the voice of Not Waving But Drowning.

Margaret Corry was the Lion Aunt. Never really at home with the Hull accent, she was at her best in the later scenes, feebler and fonder, absent-minded and anxious, sleeping her life away in her favourite armchair.

It says much for this production that the unlikely, complex relationship at the heart of the piece was both moving and amusing, and by the end we felt we had shared the private life of this most secluded of poets and her unhappy muse.

AN EVENING OF ALAN BENNETT

Heads First Theatre Company at Brentwood Theatre

15.10.09

Miss Schofield has been uprooted from her little backwater, ending up in the clinical anonymity of Sister Tudor's hospital ward. We never discover what ails her, though we come to realise, as she does, that she'll never visit Australia, never again wear the little fitted coat from Richard Shops.

Glenda Abbott's masterly performance, moving and acutely observed, took us on the long decline from tiny busybodying triumphs in the works canteen, through the consulting room to the operating theatre and the bed by the window. Her expression when she heard the bad news spoke volumes, and she caught exactly the melancholy dying fall of Bennett's dialogue. Ageing visibly – helped by careful lighting – she found tragedy in the get well cards, and ended her days in a wheel chair, watching the fly that has singled her out …

Her music was Ronnie Binge's Cornet Carillon, just the thing on the wireless of a Friday night.

Mr Dodsworth is more of a Middle-of-the-Road, Easy Listening man. Like Miss Schofield, he once believed himself indispensable. Now he's retired to spend more time with his budgie, and put all thoughts of Warburton's docketing system behind him. Until Miss Prothero disturbs his slumbers with news of root and branch, new-broom changes. Glenda Abbott's Peggy had much in common with her Margaret – that's there in the writing, too – but she had a sharper, meaner streak. Brian Terry's florid Arthur fussed about his sitting room, talking to Millie [the bird] and Winnie [his late wife], proud to be branching out into pottery and Cordon Bleu. The pathos at the end was palpable, as he realised his dependence on the old firm, and the “bad, boring bitch” who's stirred up the still waters of his little backwater.

This Alan Bennett double bill – A Woman of No Importance and A Visit from Miss Prothero – was directed for Heads First by Marjorie Dunn.

A Visit from Miss Prothero was originally teamed with another one-acter about the workplace, Green Forms. And for all the delights of this tour-de-force, a little more variety might have made for a better balanced evening.