APRIL IN PARIS. To 3 August.

York

APRIL IN PARIS
by John Godber

Theatre Royal Studio To 3 August 2002
Tue-Sat 7.45pm Mat 27 July, 1 Aug 2.45pm
Runs 1hr 35min One interval

TICKETS 01904 623568
Review Timothy Ramsden 20 July

York's lovely studio is the perfect place for a touching revival of Godber's marriage comedy.Nicholas Lane seems to have mis-directed Godber's play and the improvement is astonishing. In place of the usual comic style, with seesaw swings between nudging laugh-lines at the audience and slapping them in the face with wet sentiment, Lane and his fine cast hold the play firmly in their grip.

Godber runs the gamuts of character and emotion from A to B, literally given this emblematic pair's names. Bet's bored after 10 years married, Al's unemployed and living on put-downs and amateurish painting in his shed, obsessive little canvasses showing billowing industry such as has cast him off.

It's a short play, and we only reach Paris post-interval, for the free weekend Bet's won in a magazine competition. For this pair, it's an adventure – even nearby York and Beverley are other worlds for Al.

Playing for reality rather than laughs – though there remain a fair number of those – allows the relationship to develop beautifully. Big macho Al flounders when his wife leaves him alone in a restaurant for a few minutes; his yob-Englishman-abroad emerges on the Metro he fears, not through drunkenness, but as a deliberate defence against potential muggers (it's convincing enough to scare off the whole Francophone compartment).

By contrast, his keen interest in the Louvre, which has an unexpected bonus in its impact on his own painting, gives a glimpse of human potential that's been buried in everyday life.

Eamonn Fleming makes these disparate sides of his character sympathetically believable; Fiona Wass contrastingly matches him with her soft-voiced hopefulness. Though it's something that turns to gritty harshness at low moments in their seeming dead-end married life, voicing years of disappointment. They make a believably ill-sorted couple: the teenager who married a big-seeming man to find, years on, he's going nowhere and she has expectations he cannot begin, financially or emotionally, to help her realise.

Lynette Hartgill's set opens out from their cabin-like living-room to tricolour splendour for the Parisian section. When Humberside life's, rather awkwardly, wheeled back on for the epilogue, the Parisian colour remains to back it – life's not going to be quite the same again. A gem of a production.

Al: Eamonn Fleming
Bet: Fiona Wass

Director: Nicholas Lane
Designer: Lynette Hartgill
Lighting/Sound: Matt Savage

2002-07-23 16:52:33