AFTER MRS ROCHESTER.

AFTER MRS ROCHESTER
by Polly Teale

Duke of York's Theatre:
Runs: 2hrs 15m: one interval
Mon-Sat7.30pm, matinees Thur & Sat 2.30pm

Tkts 020 7369 1791
Review: Kim Durham, 23 July

This pedestrian biography makes heavy weather of Jean Rhys' turbulent life
If you are fanatical about the writer Jean Rhys this may well be for you. I have to confess I have never read Wide Sargasso Sea, but now, having seen Polly Teale's production of her own play about the life of its author, I feel I know what it is like to be trapped in its turbid waters.

The subject of Rhys' most celebrated novel was Mrs. Rochester, the original mad woman in the attic from Jane Eyre; many have drawn parallels between her fictional heroine and the writer herself.

Both were white Creoles from the West Indies who ended trapped in remote rural English locations. Both were wild, sometimes violent, misunderstood women.

Despite the turbulence of Rhys' life, Teale's play remains resolutely undramatic. Instead of development we are offered chronology. As the play opens, we see a drunken and confused Jean Rhys, Diana Quick in a heavily accented portrayal, refusing to open the door to her estranged daughter.

This is the framing device for an autobiographical account, with Quick doing what she can with the rather portentous narrative. We see the roots of Rhys' problems in her repressed childhood in Dominica, where her isolated white Victorian mother firmly closes the shutters against the sight and sounds of the local pagan Carnival.

From there it's a short journey to a chaotic life of poverty and disastrous love affairs in England. Rhys is a sucker, apparently, for anyone who tells her she has beautiful eyes.

Because this is an exploration of a psychologically damaged figure, Teale also offers psychodynamic deconstruction. Thus we have the permanent disquieting presence of Mrs Rochester, a wounded, animalistic figure from Rhys' (and presumably Charlotte Bronte's) unconscious.

It may well be that Rhys herself derived some release from giving fictional life to her demon, but despite Sarah Bull's brave performance as Mrs Rochester, we get little sense of that here.

Angela Davies' design, with its dominating backdrop of ominous clouds, effectively reflects the storminess of Rhys' psyche, while Polly Teale's own Shared Experience production manages some nifty doubling from its cast and an effectively fluid staging. Nothing, however, can disguise its ultimate failure to draw meaning from a chaotic life.

Cast: David Annen, Sarah Ball, Syan Blake, Hattie Ladbury, Amy Marston, Madeleine Potter, Diana Quick, Simon Thorp

Director: Polly Teale
Design: Angela Davies
Movement: Leah Hausman
Dramaturgy: Nancy Meckler
Composer: Howard Davidson
Lighting: Chris Davey

2003-07-23 14:27:59