AFTERPLAY.
London
AFTERPLAY
by Brian Friel
Gate Theatre, Dublin production at the Gielgud Theatre
Tue-Sat 8pm Mat Wed & Sun 3.30pm Sat 6pm
Runs 1hr 10min No interval
TICKETS 0870 890 1105 (Booking fee)
Review Timothy Ramsden 24 September
Theatre of the highest quality; faultless, yet enervating rather than energising.On stage we see an elegant, herringbone-floored café, all dusty late 19th-style century elegance on a slightly cramped scale petit chandelier, small tables with legs making a bow to refined curvature and chairs more tactful than extravagant. The writing is as well-turned, the performances equally sophisticated.
Yet, however exquisitely-crafted the script is, it remains crafted. The breath of life with its awkwardnesses and contradictions never freshens up proceedings. You know both actors could do much more. They're like caged creatures, licking their coats to perfection for want of something to challenge imagination and technique.
And only 70 minutes playing-time, with not a clear-view seat in stalls or dress circle for under thirty quid. Yet Friel wrote this as the third section of a Chekhov-related triptych. In Dublin, part one was produced separately, and Afterplay in a double-bill with Friel's version of a one act vaudeville The Bear.
All three are about illusion and deception in the relation between a woman and man. Following from the sad yet humorous trickery of The Yalta Game - a love's labours won and the farce of Chekhov's own piece, this elegiac love's labours lost may well have more point than it has solo. At least one of the other Three Plays After could have accompanied, and contextualised, this piece, recalling Friel's Lovers with its one-act 'Winners' and 'Losers'.
Sonya, the plain yet deep-spirited landowner in Uncle Vanya meets Andrey, brother to the Three Sisters. It's some two decades plus a revolution, though you'd not know it from this story on from their original plays. First, we hear their histories at one stage it seems we may be in for run-downs on the two plays' entire dramatis personae. Then comes a retrace through layers of lies told earlier on.
There's even an gently optimistic conclusion. Sonya gives her address then tells Andrey not to write. But he settles down to compose a letter to her this is one chance he'll not miss. Across a longer evening, it could reflect ironically back to Yalta; alone, Afterplay is more than a dramatic fancy, yet something less than life.
Sonya Serebriakova: Penelope Wilton
Andrey Prozorov: John Hurt
Director: Robin Lefevre
Designer: Liz Ascroft
Lighting: Mick Hughes
2002-09-26 03:01:47