ABSOUTELY FRANK. To 5 August.

Scarborough

ABSOLUTELY FRANK
by Tim Firth

Stephen Joseph Theatre (McCarthy) To 5 August 2006
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat 5 Aug 2.30pm
Ruins 2hr 10min One interval

TICKETS: 01723 370541
www.sjt.uk.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 3 August

Fine comic moments in play of contrasting types.
Tim Firth’s back in Scarborough, where his best-known plays Neville’s Island and The Safari Party began life. This time he brings a 2-hander, with 2-in-1 locations and 2 actors playing 3 characters between them.

If plotting ingenuity becomes forced at times and there isn’t the energy propelling his best-known work, Frank’s still a neat piece showing Firth’s flair for comic dialogue. Though nothing makes it an up-to-the-moment 21st-century play, it reflects neatly on the changing employment patterns of recent decades, while making a point about the way traditional skills and their passing-on have been replaced by new dynamics.

Frank runs electrical-installations for a northern family firm, which wants a large illuminated sign to announce its presence to the new ring-road. The nature of this sign has a sting-in-the-tail, for Frank and the plot.

His new assistant Alan seems an inexpressive teenager, but his sparse, unlikely statements finally make sense, and hint at plot developments (Firth ought to make Alan’s status clear: he hardly seems ready to be taken out on the 60-foot high ledge where the first act’s set). Both characters have hidden depths, and even if Frank’s novelistic powers are limited, his enthusiasm’s undimmed.

Post-interval, Firth takes us into the office previously glimpsed through a window. It’s now occupied by management wannabe Gavin. Relying on (and over-stretching) the comic device of cross-purposes Firth both wanders into the unlikely and sets-up a fruitful confusion, while preparing the way for a cunning final line.

There’s some unconvincing dialogue here at first, but later comes a fine comic situation, forcing its very separate characters together and enabling Frank, by now at the low end of the employment food-chain, to use his old craft-skills.

Michael Bertenshaw persuasively shows Frank’s experienced confidence in the first act and good-hearted willingness in the second, while Michael Imerson transforms utterly in voice and physicality from inarticulate Alan to the appalling Gavin, who’s both bossy and fawning. Richard Derrington’s production can’t disguise the weaker solo moments with the characters’ flights of self-aggrandisement, but is fine while these 2 are together – which fortunately is most of the time.

Frank: Michael Bertenshaw
Alan/Gavin: Michael Imerson

Director: Richard Derrington
Designer: Pip Leckenby
Lighting: Jo Dawson
Wigs: Felicite Gillham

2006-08-04 12:36:33