There’s no smoke without fire in Darling, and dramatic tension finally erupts, but not until well into the second half. By this point, one wonders whether the wait was really worth it, particularly in a show whose characters are all dislikeable. Pete (Tom Edward-Kane) for some reason has a cello in either the staff room, the back office or some other non-customer facing place (the set is distinctly non-specific every-place), and plays it at length, much to the displeasure of his superior, who … [Read more...]
Innocence at The Bread and Roses Theatre
What is one supposed to think when a teacher, Andrew Vines (Malcolm Jeffries) offers a schoolboy (Theo Watt) his personal mobile number (that is, not a phone number provided by his employer) so that the boy doesn’t have to go through official channels in order to communicate with him? The events in question took place between 2011 and 2013, but it is not so much the exchange of numbers that creeped the boy out, but rather what was actually communicated. The play doesn’t specify whether it was … [Read more...]
Private Lives starring Patricia Hodge and Nigel Havers
Some of the sound effects are rather distracting in this production of Private Lives, particularly in the first act: certain lines were in danger of being overwhelmed by the sounds of the sea. I take the view that the script is sufficiently strong to indicate by way of pointing out the characters’ location (for example) that noises of waves and seagulls didn’t really need to be piped into the theatre quite so loudly. Anyway, having gone through the pain of divorce, Elyot (a convincing Nigel … [Read more...]
The Water’s Edge by Theresa Rebeck – The Questors Theatre
The setting, a note in the show’s programme asserts, “is immaterial”. I beg to differ: if it were truly immaterial, why not set it in Antarctica? All of the action takes place in the back garden of a country house. Of course, English country houses can (and do) have gardens, but would there really be day after day of dry weather? Why is there no parasol, gazebo or anything that could provide shelter from the inevitable rain? I take the director’s point about not having to bother with American … [Read more...]
Footfalls & Rockaby by Samuel Beckett at Jermyn Street Theatre
As with much, if not all, of the Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) canon, the stage directions are so precise that one production of a play of his looks, at face value, much the same as another. “The walking should be like a metronome”, so say the stage directions for Footfalls, in which May (Charlotte Emmerson) has the unenviable job of pacing the stage in such a way that “one length must be measured in exactly nine seconds”. In the second half of this double-bill, Rockaby, an unnamed character (Siân … [Read more...]