AFTER THE DANCE. To 30 November.

Tour

AFTER THE DANCE
by Terence Rattigan

Oxford Stage Company (and Salisbury Playhouse) tour to 30 November 2002
Runs 2hr 40min Two intervals
Review Timothy Ramsden 19 October at Salisbury Playhouse

Catch this a fine play revived with some beautiful casting and superb direction.With an endless flow of Cowards (including OSC's fine Hay Fever), two Somerset Maughams in the West End and a continuous sprinkling of J.B. Priestleys, British theatre's showing it can still produce 'em like they used to write them. As with his Coward, Dominic Dromgoole shows that sensitive casting and the scrupulous detail he brought to the many fine new plays he gave as artistic director at London's Bush Theatre can give an unrivalled intensity to a forgotten period drama.

Written, and set in, the months leading to World War II, drawing it seems on personal experiences, the play shows a group of Mayfair socialites who might once have been 'bright young things' but as a character says were never really bright and are no longer young.

It's not quite the rediscovery of a great lost play that's made out; nowadays its depiction of a drink-cocooned absolute hell in highish society tips into the unbalanced, something accentuated by the stage weights and braces visibly holding up Jonathan Fensom's spaciously realistic set.

Yet the action's fascinating in its portrayal of financial dependency among poor relations and friends. And it's to be hoped the large cast doesn't preclude more productions (National Theatre, where have you been?) for the very good central performances here still leave room for characters to breathe in other interpretations- the mark of a really good script. (Another quality mark is the way Rattigan knows when there's no need for dialogue, as at the second act climax.)

Dromgoole's fine-judged direction gives each character their appropriate style, from Alan Perrin's ex-lover whose spurning was his making as a businessman and Anna Hope's Helen - whose love lets her develop from reserved outsider to become a firm-spined influence on events - to Joanna Scanlan's ripe socialite, a parasite for whom life consists of drinks-parties and gossip, diving across a sofa in sheer exhilaration at being alive in this half-dead world.

Two performances stand out: Catherine Russell's Joan hints at desperation behind the smiles, fear behind the bravado, and gives a sense of the happy person she was before her rich husband brought her into this affluent chaos.

And Bob Barrett, giving every indication of being next in the style of Donald Sindrn and Stephen Fry, begins as an amiable parasite. Lying around, interrupting everyone else, he goes on to show that his unlikely midway line about having a will of his own is born out as he sets off for a job in outer Siberia, or Manchester as these people call it.

John Reid: Bob Barrett
Peter Scott-Fowler: Jamie Parker
Williams: Paul Rainbow
Joan Scott-Fowler: Catherine Russell
Helen Banner: Anna Hope
Dr George Banner/Lawrence Walters: Jonah Russell
Julia Browne: Joanna Scanlan
Cyril Carter: Ed Grant
David Scott-Fowler: Michael Siberry
Moya Lexington/Miss Potter: Joanne Howarth
Arthur Power: Alan Perrin
Party Guests: Andrew Baldrey, Wendy Chant, Alex Kennedy, Tina Lucy, Neil Philpott, Lyn Woods, Jo Wrigley

Director: Dominic Dromgoole
Designer: Jonathan Fensom
Lighting: Natasha Chivers
Sound: Tim Mascall

2002-10-21 14:02:16