Theatre Review: Curtains (Rose Theatre, Kingston)

Its title gesturing cheekily both to the issue of death that’s at its centre, and to the domesticity that constitutes its context, Stephen Bill’s 1987 play Curtains takes a well-worn dramatic situation – a family gathering to celebrate a birthday – in order to explore mortality and the still-controversial issue of the right to die. The birthday girl here is Ida, a pain-wracked and wheelchair-bound 86-year-old whose family – daughters Katherine and Margaret, their spouses Geoffrey and Douglas,  and Katherine and Geoffrey’s son Michael -  seem almost maniacally determined for her to have a jolly good time. Naturally, the day springs some surprises, not least the return to the fold of the youngest daughter, Susan, after a 25-year absence, and the fulfillment of Ida’s own long-held birthday wish.       

Lindsay Posner’s bright revival for Kingston Rose, with its excellent cosy/shabby living room set by Peter McIntosh  (peeling wallpaper, trifle on the table, sunlight through a stained glass window), makes the production itself a mini family get-together by casting the playwright’s son Leo Bill as Michael, the 20-something grandson who, along with the practical neighbour Mrs. Jackson (fine Marjorie Yates) has been Ida’s principal carer. Bill, brilliant in everything from The Glass Menagerie to The School for Scandal to The Silence of the Sea, manages to make something distinctive and interesting of what could be a weak role, relishing Michael’s love of a bad joke and cake-scoffing, while hinting at the insecurities and anger beneath.   

Indeed, Posner’s production opens altogether superbly, with some funny, painful and well-observed interactions. A devastatingly good Sandra Voe conveys, with a minimum of dialogue, Ida’s frustration, anger and sheer weariness, as the reluctant birthday celebrant endures her family’s strained, well-meaning attempts at joviality. Despite roving accents, Saskia Reeves, Wendy Nottingham and Caroline Catz  make a good, strongly contrasting sibling trio. (The play can be seen as another Three Sisters variant, of sorts.)

If the second half is less successful, it’s down to the play’s recourse to a too-strident debate on the central issues, one that feels rigged. An element of harangue creeps into the approach, as the playwright's intentions become too obvious. Tim Dutton brings some sharp, wry humour to his performance as  Douglas but the character is too transparently the play’s mouthpiece, and without effective opposition, the drama's interest wanes. 

Still, even if this Alan Ayckbourn-meets-Amour evening doesn’t quite make good on its initial promise, it remains worthwhile for some potent moments, such as the screwy everyday Englishness of Reeves’s nervy Katherine confessing: “I had a breakdown …  I don’t think anyone knew about it.”

Curtains is booking until 17 March. Further information here. 

Theatre Review: The Wars of the Roses (Rose, Kingston)

My review of Trevor Nunn's production of The Wars of the Roses is up at The Reviews Hub. You can read it here.

Theatre Review: The Sacred Flame (Rose, Kingston)

As with the work of a number of early 20th century dramatists, the plays of W. Somerset Maugham have fallen out of fashion in recent years, the occasional revival of The Circle or The Letter notwithstanding. Believing that there is “a real snobbery in some of our theatres towards writers such as Maugham,” the industrious Matthew Dunster has set about putting this situation to rights, with a production of Maugham’s 1928 work The Sacred Flame for English Touring Theatre. A controversial piece in its day, Maugham’s play has been pretty much forgotten since a late 1960s revival starring Gladys Cooper. Dunster’s striking, though erratically acted, production makes a good case for the play, even if it can’t quite redeem some of the more problematic assumptions underpinning the piece.

A WWI hero, Maurice Tabret has been severely disabled following an accident. Bed-ridden, he’s attended to by an all-female coterie: his mother, his wife Stella and a very dedicated nurse. But then Maurice dies suddenly. His doctor suggests that heart failure was the cause, but the nurse suspects foul play, pointing the finger of suspicion at the family members and questioning their attitude to the dead man.

From this conventional whodunnit premise, Maugham fashions a drama that touches on a range of surprisingly resonant issues, including one of our very favourite media hot potatoes: euthanasia. At times, one senses the playwright congratulating himself for his own daring, though - truth be told - the play now seems a very strange mixture of the radical and the reactionary.

Of all the text’s slaps in the face to conventional morality, the prioritising of female sexual desire over traditional care-taking duty is certainly challenging. But for all the generousness and sympathy of Maugham’s vision - “Love comes and goes, and none of us can help ourselves,” muses one character, while another proclaims that “We’re none of us all-of-a-piece … not one self but half a dozen” - there’s a rather uncomfortable attitude to disability expressed in the piece, which seems absolutely unable to conceive of an “invalid” enjoying any kind of sexual life at all, and thereby becoming merely an object of “pity” to his partner.

Despite the murky undertones of this, Dunster’s production grips and intrigues. The action, beautifully lit by Lee Curran, unfolds on a sparse white set by Anna Fleischle that strips away “the chintz and chaise longue” approach that the director believes to be part of many people’s barriers to Maugham. And while the production is hardly swamped by effects, the opening is hypnotically strange and beautiful. To the tinkling strains of a plaintive jazz version of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” (yes, really) we observe the actors quietly taking their places and stagehands dressing the set.

If anything, the production could have used more of these innovations. Some scenes turn static - the actors are parked around delivering revelations like they’re in an Agatha Christie play - and some of the performances aren’t all that they could have been. The most originally-conceived character by far is Maurice’s mother, Mrs. Tabret - a prototype Mrs. Moore in A Passage to India, I’d suggest - whose reactions give the play its biggest surprises. Margot Leicester brings understated grace and some saving wry humour to this role, and provides the production with all of its most memorable and moving moments.

She does this, it must be said, without a great deal of help from the rest of the cast. Beatriz Romilly’s Stella lacks allure and keeps bursting into fake-looking, shoulder-heaving sobs. Sarah Churm starts meekly and then turns shrill as the righteous Nurse Wayland. Al Nedjari clumps about as the doctor who doesn’t want a scandal to sabotage his burgeoning practice, and David Ricardo-Pearce is barely there as Maurice’s brother. As Major Liconda - onetime beau of Mrs. T - Robert Demeger has some effective scenes. But all the male roles feel underwritten by Maugham, with the exception of Maurice who sadly exits the play after Act 1 (though is - brilliantly - kept visible for the remainder of the action in this production). A double shame as Jamie De Courcey is the only cast member who gives a performance that's a match for Leicester’s wonderful turn.

The Sacred Flame is a flawed play, and Dunster’s production doesn’t entirely overcome its imperfections. But there’s more than enough of interest here to make this a very welcome revival that’s well worth the journey into zone 6 - or elsewhere - to see.

Touring to:


26-29 September Northern Stage, Newcastle
2-6 October Oxford Playhouse
9–13 October New Wolsey, Ipswich
16–20 October Liverpool Playhouse
23–27 October Yvonne Arnaud, Guildford
30 October–3 November Theatre Royal Brighton
13–17 November The Nuffield, Southampton
20–24 November Cambridge Arts Theatre

Reviewed for British Theatre Guide.

Theatre Review: Farewell to the Theatre/The Importance of Being Earnest (Rose Theatre, Kingston)

The Autumn season at Kingston’s Rose Theatre opens with a double-bill of sorts that intriguingly pairs one classic, oft-performed play, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, with another that’s receiving its (rather belated) world premiere, Harley Granville Barker’s 1916 one-acter Farewell to the Theatre.

Directed by the Rose’s Artistic Director Stephen Unwin and starring Jane Asher, the two productions play in rep. However, their pairing doesn’t seem to have been motivated by any particular deep connection between the two pieces, beyond what Unwin has termed his “perverse pleasure [in tackling] one play especially conceived for the proscenium arch … and another about saying goodbye to that kind of theatre forever.”

Farewell to the Theatre - which is also, rather confusingly, the title chosen by Richard Nelson for his forthcoming play about Granville Barker at Hampstead Theatre - takes the form of a duologue between an actress, Dorothy (Asher), and her lawyer, Edward (Richard Cordery), whom she meets to discuss her possible retirement. Dorothy has grown to distain the business of soliciting money to get plays put on, and as the pair discuss the financial prospects (none too good) of the production that she is about to appear in, the play touches upon the protagonists’ personal and professional regrets, finally broadening out into a wider discussion of changes in the theatre and the function of the artist.

Reflecting Granville Barker’s own concerns about the direction of the theatre at the turn-of-the-century, it’s easy to see the appeal of Farewell to the Theatre to those “in the business.” But the play’s musings on theatrical matters may hold less appeal for general audiences. Unwin’s production is competently performed, with Asher stylish and Cordery warm and wry, and it generates more interest towards the end, when the discussion takes a philosophical turn. But the overall effect is static and slightly smug; Granville Barker may be concerned with the function of the theatre here, but what he has produced feels in form and concept more like a radio play.

Happily, The Importance of Being Earnest proves a much more successful and engaging experience. The play is, of course, invariably a pleasure and Unwin’s production has genuine charm. Designed with unobtrusive elegance by Hayden Griffin, the approach is very much in the traditional mould of, say, Peter Hall’s The Rivals rather than the po-mo stylistic revisionism of a Deborah Warner School for Scandal. Unwin and his team offer an unfussy, no-nonsense take on a play whose most famous lines are by now so well known that the audience laughs in anticipation of them.

Still, the production feels vivid and fresh. Asher’s Lady Bracknell could do with a little more vocal heft at times, but her lines zing anyway, and she has some superb moments, not least the classic scene in which she interrogates Jack (the excellent Daniel Brocklebank).

Asher is also well supported by Bruce Mackinnon, who’s a delightful Algernon. Making her professional debut as Cecily, Jenny Rainsford takes a little while to warm up, but her central scene with Kirsty Besterman’s superb Gwendolen is perfectly played. And there’s amusing work from Walter Van Dyk, doubling as the butlers Merriman and Lane, from Cordery as Rev. Canon Chasuble, and from Ishia Bennison who adorably turns Miss Prism’s prudery into a form of flirtatiousness. Two lengthy intervals slow the evening a little more than is necessary. But this remains an accomplished and very enjoyable production that keeps you giggling contentedly throughout.

The productions run until 30 October. Further information at the Rose website.



Reviewed for British Theatre Guide.