A CONVERSATION. To 9 October.

Manchester

A CONVERSATION
by David Williamson

Royal Exchange Studio To 9 October 2004
Mon-Fri 7.30pm Sat 8pm Mat Thu 2.30pm Sat 4pm
Post-show discussion 7 October 7.30pm
Runs1hr 35min No interval

TICKETS: 0161 833 9833
Review: Timothy Ramsden

Banal title conceals a gruelling experience.The issue-play is not dead, though it cannot help but appear contrived. Even in the experienced hands of Australian playwright David Williamson, whose drama of Restorative Justice here receives its UK premiere.

In a sense, this drama of Community Conferencing is a strange case. Restorative Justice brings victim and perpetrator together by mutual consent to seek a way ahead for lives affected by crime. The victim, 20-year old Donna, can't be here, having been killed in a savage sexual assault which has earned its perpetrator Scott Williams such hatred he's been stabbed by fellow-prisoners.

So it's the families who assemble on the impersonally comfortable disc of Gemma Fripp's set, dividing the audience in two just as the seating sets the two 'sides' in slightly curving lines of opposition.

The parabola the drama will follow is clear from the start. The skill lies in the surprises of individual movements along it, which Williamson handles with his customary skill. An arc of loud recrimination and cross-accusation opens up personal and social responsibility. Assumptions and complacencies are serially overturned. "You've got each other," social worker Lorin coos to the dead girl's father. "We're filing for divorce," he snaps back.

Yet it's his fact-filed, hard-set preconceptions which finally take a tumble as the smiling fair-haired girl whose photograph he initially set up to challenge the murderer's family, then protectively sheathed under his jacket, is revealed as more complex and human than his idealised memory of her.

It's a tribute to Jacob Murray's confident direction and the uniformly fine cast he's assembled (barely a trace of actorishness even at emotional highpoints - everything's felt, not signalled) that even the quiet later part, as confessions find expression, holds credibility.

This landing of the dramatic parabola's bound to be the hardest part, as interesting conflict's replaced by calmer, direct statement. And neither Williamson nor the cast can wholly avoid moments seeming worthy, issues predominating over the psychology of feelings.

Yet, as accusations and defensiveness swirls between the smart-dressed Milsoms who believe they live in, "the nearest thing to a classless society on God's earth," and the rougher-hewn Williams who prove them wrong (without Williamson ever patronising them), and as Lorin gets dragged in, the drama's - and the production's - strength lies in the clarity with which each person's experience and presuppositions are integrated into the whole.

Jack Manning: Stuart Goodwin
Lorin Zemanek: Cate Hamer
Derek Milson: Martin Turner
Barbara Milsom: Tilly Tremayne
Coral Williams: Barbara Marten
Bob Shorter: David Sterne
Gail Williams: Sally Bretton
Mick Williams: Andrew Langtree

Diurector: Jacob Murray
Designer: Gemma Fripp
Lighting: Mark Distin
Souynd: Steve Brown
Dialects: Mark Langley
Assistant director: Philip Stork

2004-09-23 22:19:51