ALPHABETICAL ORDER. To 12 October.
Basingstoke
ALPHABETICAL ORDER
by Michael Frayn
Haymarket Theatre To 12 October 2002
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat 3,12 October 2pm
Audio-described 2pm
BSL signed 11 October 12 October
Runs 2hr 15min One interval
TICKETS 01256 465566
www.haymarket.org.uk
Review Timothy Ramsden 28 September
Order - alphabetical or apple-pie - and its opposite is a key Frayn theme. But it needs more incisive casting to bring its comic potential to the boil.Two recalls of a distant age here: in Frayn's play itself and in the use of a permanent (till Christmas, anyway) repertory company for a series of shows. Alphabetical Order's been overdue for revival, but the need to cast from a company chosen to cover several productions doesn't help. Not everything about old repertory days was beneficial and this assorted cast keep what should be a hot farce with a tough kick tepid and cosy.
What a world it shows. A provincial (in all senses) newspaper cuttings library in a pre-computerised age when every article was cut and pasted with scissors and sellotape and put in its right folder. Or not, in the case of Lucy: Her untidy office where, somehow, everything gets found reflects the state of her mind, her life, the failing paper and pre-Thatcherite England.
Elroy Ashmore provides a suitably shelf-stacked set. But the new broom, assistant librarian Leslie, should be 25 a generation below the others, among whom personal relationships have sprouted. Melanie Revill and Claire Carpenter don't suggest anything like this getting-on-for-a-generation gap. So the point of a new, less clubbable mind bursting in, modernising and disrupting, is lost. And Leslie's multiple apologies and second act obeisance to the boss she's clearly reorganising seem marooned someway from the character. We lose the irony in her final resolve to save the paper.
Tom Bevan's John seems too young to belong to the institutionalised fossils, for all his heavy specs - and fusty manner, which remains too obviously an external mannerism, an attempt to cope with the character's indecisive dialogue. It's hard to know what to make of Jonathan Kemp's Wally, whose initial, skidding entry sets his courtship of Lucy at an artificial level ill-fitting the serious threads it seems to acquire later.
Kate Dove is neatly fussy as the manipulative, company-minded writer and Craige Els has fun as a cheery beanpole messenger, hanging artlessly over folk like a willowy wand. James Hornsby's taciturn Arnold makes the comic most of his monosyllables, without suggesting someone whose oral inarticulacy might ever be contrasted by a flow of writing.
Leslie: Melanie Revill
Geoffrey: Craige Els
Arnold: James Hornsby
John: Tom Bevan
Lucy: Claire Carpenter
Nora: Kate Dove
Wally: Jonathan Kemp
Director: Alasdair Ramsay
Designer: Elroy Ashmore
Lighting: Simon Hutchings
2002-09-30 00:48:07