A SMALL FAMILY BUSINESS. To 16 October.
Pitlochry
A SMALL FAMILY BUSINESS
by Alan Ayckbourn
Pitlochry Festival Theatre In rep to 16 October 2004
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Wed & Sat 2pm
Runs 2hr 45min One interval
TICKETS: 01796 4884626
boxoffice@pitlochry.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 2 June
Pitlochry lets rip with a swingeing account of Ayckbourn's bitter comic satire.Criminal families seem the theme at Pitlochry this year. Following the happy tourist-trappers of Gilbert's Engaged and heist-meister Heiss in The Shop at Sly Corner here's Alan Ayckbourn's inter-married on-the-fiddlers, their link to Italians the first hint of
how Ayresand Graces (family-named furniture-makers) are behaving less like cosy business people than cosa nostra gangsters.
Unlike Sly Corner, where the parents conceal their criminal ways from an innocent child, here it's honest Jack who, as he takes up the reins of commerce, is innocent of how the high moral ground he declares to the family has already been McCracken-up with everyone out for themself.
This is a large-scale piece; Benjamin Twist and Kate Nelson's production doesn't use the space as fully as others have done, for the opening, where Jack arrives home ready for fun and games in the bedroom, tearing off his clothes, calling out pet-names as he chases his wife Poppy - unaware she has the family assembled for a surprise party. (Similarly - and rightly - the directors underplay the specific mafiosi parallels at the end.)
So, it's trousers off in scene one. Subsequent revelations are moral rather than physical in the playwright's response to the naked greed-is-good individualism of the play's 1987 high-Thatcherite day. A Small Family Business becomes increasingly - for a comedy, alarmingly - bitter as it proceeds.
Pitlochry's revival is well worth seeing. Dougal Lee's Jack, straight-backed, open-faced, has an initial certainty making for considerable shockability - as the audiences' moral sense is, presumably, undergoing a few shock-waves too.
As his wife, aware everyone around seems wealthier than herself, Amanda Bellamy has a finely-judged worry - an uncertainty in face and voice reflecting a sense of failure when Anita merrily casts her little-worn clothing off on her.
Ayckbourn equates sexual and financial irregularity, expecting us to finds Anita's bondage gear good fun, but not the bully within her. And Anita's the one who revels sexually in the Rivetti connections (Harry Ward excellent in his five funny foreigner cameos). It's a shame the directors didn't quieten Angela McGowan in her last scenes - her loudness actually dissipates some of the power built up in a hitherto acute performance.
A couple of other performances are too fussily external, but Guy Fearon, Steven McNicoll and Jonathan Dryden Taytlor are excellent as the men whose business inadequacies show even in criminal activities, while Emily Pennant-Rea makes up for somewhat vapid virtue in Sly Corner with her vivid picture of a doped-up teenager turning to crime. Late in the action, her ready violence and the final image as she sits apart in a mental haze are both tellingly portrayed.
Jack McCracken: Dougal Lee
Poppy McCracken: Amanda Bellamy
Ken Ayres: Richard Addison
Tina Ruston: Francesca Dymond
Roy Ruston: Steven McNicoll
Samantha McCracken: Emily Pennant-Rea
Cliff McCracken: Guy Fearon
Anita McCracken: Angela McGowan
Desmond Ayres: Jonathan Dryden Taylor
Harriet Ayres: Jacqueline Dutoit
Yvonne Doggett: Janet Michael
Benedict Hough: Rory Murray
Lotario/Uberto/Orlando/Vincenzo/Giorgio Rivetti: Harry Ward
Directors: Benjamin Twist, Kate Nelson
Designer: Trevor Coe
Lighting: Mark Pritchard
Costume: Anya Glinski
Voice coach: Alex Gillopn
Fight director: Raymond Short
2004-06-06 18:38:03