Theatre Review: Seven Year Twitch (Orange Tree)

Simon Mattacks and Johanna Tincey in Seven Year Twitch (Photo: Robert Day)

Tweet tweet. If Woody Allen, Alan Ayckbourn and Mike Leigh joined forces to guest-write an episode of HBO’s In Treatment then it’s possible that the end result might be something like Seven Year Twitch, the lamely named but rather enjoyable new comedy from writer/director David Lewis, which has just opened at the Orange Tree. Like Lewis’s last play, the excellent How to be Happy, Seven Year Twitch is another relationship roundelay of marital discord, this time filtered through two key elements: psychotherapy and -yup - bird-watching. It’s a “shrink-rapt” comedy, you might say: sometimes sketchy and undeveloped, not entirely satisfying in the end, yet full of funny moments and engagingly tart exchanges scene by scene.

The plot concerns two therapists – colleagues and former paramours – and their intricately interconnected clientele. In the first scene, Megan (Lucy Tregear) is counselling the nervy Ben (Paul O’Mahony), a charity worker, who, following a confession of impotence, recounts an embarrassing incident at a dinner party hosted by Fran (Amanda Royle). The focus then shifts to Fran during a session with her analyst Charlie (Paul Kemp), in which she bemoans the obsessive tendencies of her competitive “twitcher” spouse Terry (Simon Mattacks) who’d missed said dinner party due to an impromptu bird-watching expedition. Dissatisfied with his profession these days, Charlie’s own marriage to Karen (Kate Miles) is also going through a sticky patch, wouldn’t you know. Karen is lusted after by Megan, who, at Charlie’s behest, ends up taking on Terry as a patient. Terry then falls for a fellow twitcher, Jill (Johanna Tincey). Further complications ensue.

Seven Year Twitch plays as an ever-escalating relay of comic high anxiety, in which the characters go through so many surprise shifts in erotic attachment that they could be auditioning for an appearance in an Iris Murdoch novel. Punchier and more profane than Ayckbourn, Lewis is great at depicting moments of social awkwardness. And - as the writer of a play about Feydeau - he doesn’t fear pushing the action into full-blown farce either – notably in a terrific sequence that finds Terry sheltering in a chair-hide in the living room while his randy wife enjoys herself in front of him with a new lover on the floor.

Yet Lewis’s production delivers moments of repose and reflection too; these rub up nicely against the broader episodes and mitigate the more contrived and schematic aspects of the plotting. (As in How to be Happy, a character’s classical music fixation once again helps to supply a melancholy undertow, and here allows for an understated, but very beautiful, close to the first half.) While there’s nothing very novel about the play’s notion that shrinks are every bit as screwed up as their clients, Seven Year Twitch is nonetheless at its sharpest on patient/therapist dynamics and the diverse contours of such relationships, which we see shifting, variously, from cool professionalism to irritation by way of sympathetic interest and even tenderness.



Paul O'Mahony in Seven Year Twitch (Photo: Robert Day)



The incidents described by the patients slide fluidly into flashbacks, with the same events sometimes shown from contrasting perspectives. But fortunately the play doesn’t get stuck on a tedious Intimate Exchanges/Constellations-style track of endless variations. Nor does it offer the obvious satirical stance on therapy that you might anticipate. Rather, the various theories that Megan and Charlie proffer regarding their clients’ behaviour can sound equal parts convincing and glib. Lewis allows the audience to make up its own mind on that score, and once again gives each of his protagonists a measure of awareness and self-delusion. Analogies between birdy and human behaviour crop up, but the playwright ensures that these aren’t hammered home in the way that the corny title suggests that they might be; there’s not even a shag gag to be heard.

The play’s structure means that we get told an awful lot about the characters, some of which isn’t exactly demonstrated by what we see. But perhaps this disjuncture is part of the point. After all, Seven Year Twitch is mostly concerned with the misunderstandings that occur within relationships, with faulty perception of others, and how gestures and actions can be misinterpreted. That’s the source of the play’s sadness - and also of its comedy. (One thing comes through clearly, though: however well intentioned, it’s probably never a good idea to present your wife with a dead bird - rare or not - as a peace-offering.)



Amanda Royle in Seven Year Twitch (Photo: Robert Day)



If there’s a problem here it’s that Lewis throws a few too many elements into the mix and struggles to juggle them, with the result that the play doesn’t snap together as satisfyingly as How to be Happy did. Too many traumas end up getting tossed around - abortions, alcoholic and absent parents, dead infants and a heap of Daddy issues - and some of the musings fail to convince. Charlie’s ranty theory on gender roles sounds rehearsed, while Fran’s tirade against consumerism (though better made) might have been drawn directly from Lewis’s previous play. And though all of the actors deliver sharp, well-defined performances - with especially fine work from Tregear and Royle (the latter a dead ringer for Lesley Manville here) - a couple of characters go to waste, feeling less fully integrated into the plot than they might have been.

Despite these shortcomings, there’s much to enjoy in Seven Year Twitch and much to admire about Lewis’s writing, in particular the way it doesn’t take the obvious route: the play spends a lot of time seeming to edge two of its characters towards each other, for example, and then completely subverts that expectation at the end. Relationships in Lewisland are incomplete, messy, frustrating affairs, resisting closure and final “analysis.” Still, for all the cynicism about human interaction that’s expressed, Lewis manages to end the play on a moment of possibility and openness, with the potential beginning of something. Two people face each other in a room once again. One encourages the other into intimacy with two simple, precious yet also deadly words: “I’m listening.”

The production runs until 22 June.

Theatre Review: The Conspirators (Orange Tree Theatre)

Václav Havel has a long association with the Orange Tree. The theatre mounted its first production by the Czech writer and erstwhile president in the late 1970s and has gone on to stage a range of his plays, including several premieres, in the ensuing years. It’s appropriate, then, that the theatre’s 40th anniversary season should commence with a play by Havel: in this case, a 1971 work here receiving its first-ever British production. The Conspirators was the first play that Havel wrote as a “banned” playwright, following the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet forces, and it takes as its focus the complexities and ironies of a post-Revolutionary period.

Set in an unspecified country, the piece opens following the fall of the brutal dictatorship of one General Olah. The situation is a precarious one: the arrest of the new Prime Minister’s Permanent Secretary, Stein (Alister Cameron), who’s accused of being a “fanatical follower of the dictatorship,” has led to student demonstrations, and the fledgling democracy is already looking decidedly fragile. With rumours rife that Olah is in fact still alive, and preparing to mobilise his supporters, a concerned group made up of the State Prosecutor (Christopher Ravenscroft), Major Ofir (Paul Gilmore), the Head of Censorship (Kieron Jecchinis), the Chief of Police, Colonel Moher (David Rintoul), and the wealthy widow Helga (Lucy Tregear) meet to discuss their options. Their decision to set up a Revolutionary Council leads to its own set of problems, however, not least the pressing question of who will be its chairman.

The premise might suggest an evening of worthy-but-dull political debate, but the mischievous Havel has a few delightful tricks up his sleeve. He’s a writer who’s unafraid of sharp changes in tone, and his anarchic humour - not all of it exactly highbrow - erupts at the most unexpected of moments. Energetic injections of farce (plus some rather unexpected S&M encounters) punctuate the political machinations, and the production gets funnier as it goes along, with running gags and repetitions adding up to some priceless comic moments in the second half. Aided by a strong translation by Tomas Rychetsky and Carol Rocamora, Sam Walters’s production proves thoroughly adept at navigating these shifts in mood. The approach is sometimes heavy-handed - Vincent Brimble’s Prime Minister praises the country’s prison system as we listen to the sounds of a man being tortured, for example - but the occasional lapses of taste and subtlety generate their own meaning and momentum. While some may quibble with the lack of specific context - the production certainly invites us to “insert contemporary parallel here” - Havel’s approach avoids getting the play bogged down in historical data, instead allowing us to ponder the tensions and paradoxes inherent in any post-Revolutionary situation. The playwright piles irony upon irony as the manipulations and betrayals mount up.

The production also benefits from the sterling efforts of its large cast. Paul Gilmore and Kieron Jecchinis deliver wonderfully funny performances as the mild-mannered Major and the silly Censor respectively, while David Rintoul makes a strong impression as the bullish, whip-wielding Colonel. Lucy Treager is also good value as the manipulative Helga, a woman who swaps sexual partners and allegiances with hilarious rapidity. Best of all, though, is Christopher Ravenscroft, as the ageing, disappointed Prosecutor, frustrated with his “homebody” wife (Claire Vousden) and lusting hopelessly after his secretary (Mona Goodwin). The role could simply result in a crude caricature of a performance but Ravenscroft invests it with his customary sensitivity and nuance; he’s an actor who seems to bring a touch of soulfulness to every part he plays.

At times it seems that Havel doesn’t quite have his material entirely in his grasp. Some promising roles and plot-lines sadly go to waste - I expected to see more of James Corscadden and Jill McAusland as Helga’s son and niece, for one. And the rather abrupt ending lacks a bit of punch and definition. The quirkiness of The Conspirators may not be to all tastes, but this is a lively and thought-provoking evening that gets the Orange Tree’s 40th season off to an excellent start.

The production runs for 2 hours 25 minutes and is booking until 1st October. Further information at the Orange Tree website.