ALICE VIRGINIA. To 10 April.
London
ALICE VIRGINIA
by D M W Greer
New End Theatre To 10 April 2004
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Sat & Sun 3.30pm
Runs 2hr 35min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7794 0022
www.newendtheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 21 March
Elegant study in decline could benefit from more clarity.If only Tennessee Williams hadn't got there first. D.M.W. Greer updates illusory Southern US gentility to modern times with 1950s flashbacks, but otherwise his Virginian Alice inhabits the illusory territory of Amanda Wingfield and, increasingly, Blanche Dubois.
The time-shifts are the distinctive feature of the play along with a sort of distinction in having a second half composed largely of two ladies mother and adult daughter recriminating while stuck in a bathroom. It's here their secrets are revealed. Johanna can't surrender her cigarettes (despite the promise from her mother of what starts out as $25,000 but ends up as a cheque for just $25).
Nor can her genteel-till-it-kills mother stop downing alcohol. Meanwhile, the profligate son's involved in his last desperate money-raising scam, having lied about everything as the ultimate dreg and drain of Alice's self-deluding latter-day Southern belle image.
It's not always easy, in Cathrine Meister-Petersen's production, to be sure which home we're in, and when. And it's hard to allocate responsibility between script and production who's doing whom the favour here? Which is a pity because both have plenty of good qualities.
The play itself doesn't cover new ground but the mother daughter relationship, the irritations of co-existence in a world aggravated by men's unreliability, the attempt to live a life so far removed from usual images of the mid 20th century and the present day, have a fascination.
Nicolai Hart Hansen's walled set combines suggestions of elegance with greyed-out blankness, though it cannot distinguish between locales, and is used confusingly the two doors are sometimes clearly meant to be taken as if two sides of the same door, but you'd have to be super-keen to be aware of how that fits to locale.
Susannah York has the faded sophistication, though her Alice can be stronger on mood than precision and drive. Andrew Halliday brings resourceful mendacity and impatience to his main role as the wastrel offspring Byron. And Amanda Boxer, as ever, is excellent as the most realistic character, the daughter who knows her own limitations and has been tired out by being reared on mother's illusions.
Alice Virginia: Susannah York
Alexander Wheeler/Byron Prescott: Andrew Halliday
Johanna: Amanda Boxer
Man: Timothy Dale
Director: Cathrine Meister-Petersen
Designer: Nicolai Hart Hansen
Lighting: Jonathan Rouse
Sound: Mishi Bekesi
Composer: Thomas Gregory
Dialect coach: Penny Dyer
2004-03-24 03:48:53