AMONGST FRIENDS To 13 June.
London.
AMONGST FRIENDS
by April de Angelis.
Hampstead Theatre To 13 June 2009.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 3pm & 3 June 2.30pm.
Audio-described 6 June 3pm.
Captioned/Post-show discussion with speech-to-text transcription 9 June.
Post-show discussion 3 June 2.30pm.
Runs 1hr 50min One interval.
TICKETS: 020 7722 9301.
www.hampsteadtheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 30 May.
People not living the good life in a play to match.
This is a ghetto play, set in what would be a gated community if it were a community at all. Soaring above south London – Patrick Connellan’s design shows both its fashionable interior design and spectacular night-time cityscape-view – is a suitable home for a pair who look down on people; Richard’s a smug politician, Lara a hard-hitting newspaper columnist afraid to go out into the world where her prose hits so hard.
They look down on each other too, as becomes clear when breast-nurse (queue jokes) Caitlin and drugs-counsellor husband Joe arrive for dinner, their first meeting since Lara and Richard left for their protective bio-sphere. Joe bears a grudge, Caitlin’s all genuine smiles. When food arrives it comes with psychic working-class mum Shelley who puts them under moral pressure, added to by Richard and Caitlin’s unfinished emotional business.
It’s also a ghetto play because it assumes interest in morally vacuous people and an affluent lifestyle which, if not lived by all the characters, remains the focus of attention. Caught between the unpleasant characters (varied only by Shelley being loose in the mental hinges, and unbelievable as a dramatic creation) and a lack of wit or intensity that would provide energy, the play becomes increasingly improbable.
Latish on a fatality’s used to regain momentum, unsuccessfully. Instead there’s a long scene-change in which bouquets are placed in near-invisible places, then things carry on at the same tepid temperature. Five good actors do what they can. Director Anthony Clark ploughs conscientiously on. And April de Angelis has written some strong plays.
But this has all the look of that nightmarish situation where a playwright responds to a commission, the play’s announced as part of a season, and everybody’s committed before the writer realises (they usually do) an idea that pitched well isn’t going to translate into a play; where the characters don’t spring live into the authorial imagination and where increasingly desperate stratagems are written-in in the name of comedy.
Anything like that happen here? I’ve no way of knowing; but it’s dispiriting so many symptoms drag their way through this piece.
Lara: Helen Baxendale.
Richard: Aden Gillett.
Caitlin:L Emma Cunniffe.
Joe: James Dreyfus.
Shelley: Vicki Pepperdine.
Director: Anthony Clark.
Designer: Patrick Connellan.
Lighting: Tim Mitchell.
Sound/Composer: Edward Lewis.
Fight director: Kate Waters.
2009-05-31 13:30:18