AN ENGLISH TRAGEDY. To 8 March.

Watford.

AN ENGLISH TRAGEDY
by Ronald Harwood.

Palace Theatre To 8 March 2008.
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat 27 Feb, 5 March 2.30pm; 1, 8 March 3pm.
Audio-described 8 March 3pm.
Captioned 26 Feb.
Runs 2hr 25min One interval.

TICKETS: 01923 225671.
www.watfordpalacetheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 18 February.

Glimpses from a lost-and-gone Britain.
John Amery was just an abnormal, anti-Semitic, anti-Communist, self-obsessed upper-class young Englishman of the 1940s, whose love for England defined the country as it appealed to him. And the only surprising word in that sentence is “abnormal”.

One of the things Ronald Harwood’s ponderous, though literate, new play doesn’t explore very far is how ill-equipped the psychiatry, let lone the legal system, of the time was to deal with young Amery’s mental condition. Not that Amery helped. Son of a Cabinet Minister, he broadcast Nazi propaganda to Britain during the War and was arrested as a traitor afterwards. John hated his governmental father, loved his mother and obsessed over a scraggy childhood teddy-bear, being an erratic individual who behaved according to his class.

The play comes alight while Richard Goulding bounds around with the naïve enthusiasm of a contemptuous public-school prefect who doesn’t realise he’s in a world where actions have consequences. Amery’s only satisfactory onstage relationship with a non-bear is with the condemned-cell Warder, typical toff regard for someone safely below them in society and so no threat.

Making Amery so contemptibly fascinating is some achievement, as is John's super-confident calm at the trial. Casting aside possible get-outs, he surprises everyone with an underwhelming strategy that expresses the self-hate fuelling him. It’s unfortunate though that Harwood handles the revelation behind this with a pomp that leaves it seeming none-too-significant. Still, it would be unfair to give it away.

Any other action either gets bogged down in long, elegant speeches that slowly uncoil their none-too-blinding revelations, or skimpy attempts to stage courtroom scenes and a hanging much-prepared, then avoided by a blackout. Jeremy Child’s old Leo Amery tries excusing his son with a vehemence you feel would be calling for anyone else in a similar situation not to be hanged till he’d been flogged, while Diana Hardcastle suffuses John’s mother with a human warmth under the styled-hair and restrained manner.

There are other decent performances of rather sketchy roles, among which only John’s abused, war-wounded solicitor has any dramatic life, with an unflappable professional manner which Nicholas Rowe impeccably conveys.

Leo Amery: Jeremy Child.
John Amery: Richard Goulding.
‘Bryddie’ Amery: Diana Hardcastle.
Dr Rosemary Pimlott: Lucinda Millward.
Mr Taylor: Nicholas Rowe.
Major: Michael Fenton-Stevens.
Warder: Bill Thomas.
German Broadcaster: Alexander Doetsch.

Director: Di Trevis.
Designer: Ralph Koltai.
Lighting: Roger Frith.
Composer: Dominic Muldowney.
Movement: Shona Morris.
Assistant director: Isabel Quinzanos.

2008-02-20 11:50:31