AROUND ROBIN. To 21 December.

Scarborough

AROUND ROBIN
by Julia Edwards

Stephen Joseph Theatre Restaurant To 21 December 2004
Mon-Tue 9.30pm
Runs 1hr One (5 min) interval

TICKETS: 01723 370541
Review: Timothy Ramsden 17 December

Bridget Jones ages gracefully as a Pratt.While it's possible to toddle along and enjoy this latish-night show by itself, many audience members will doubtless be there a convivial 45 minutes after coming out of the new main-stage Ayckbourn play Miss Yesterday. Julia Edwards' monologue brings Ayckbourn's mood of transformation and hope down to flat earth.

In her debut drama, Edwards has had the neat idea of tracing the life of Katie Pratt through the 1990s, as she ages gracefully across the 40 barrier, through a series of Christmas newsletters to friends. As life marches on, they become increasingly confessional; life takes the shine out of Katie's rural-retreat with husband Robin.

The newsletters develop from Katie's observations to focus increasingly on her emotional experience. Builders, husband, drop-dead gorgeous women are especial objects of distress and dislike as the comedy follows the quiet anxiety of any 4x4-owning, immaculately hair-styled woman under the affluence of modern society.

It's not too far from the territory Ayckbourn did over in his earlier plays. And the thematic thread at its core, with a disillusioned Mrs Pratt finally emerging as an individual with new confidence in her own identity, is familiar enough.

Still, Edwards handles events with clarity and judgment, keeping the obvious revelation back, offering some wrong-footing along the way. And she neatly sketches a picture of the new rural awfulness, a takeover of village life by articulate middle-class incomers who establish their own self-tyranny - expressed in such details as the pecking-order of where each mother stands to collect children from school.

Another advantage of the piece is that it prevents fine Scarborough regular Eileen Battye from being reliant only on the rather limited role she has in the new Ayckbourn. There's a lightness to the voice that can melt into rich tones of assertive reasoning. And an elegance of bearing that shows all can be endured by the well-trained girl who achieves poise, perfect poise.

Katie Pratt doesn't have the text-age diary lingo of Bridget Jones. But, brought alive by Battye's assured performance, she sums up a world with simultaneous sympathy and comic distance.

Katie Pratt: Eileen Battye

Director: Denise Gilfoyle
Designer: Pip Leckenby
Sound: Osman Dervish
Costume: Christine Wall

2004-12-20 09:36:16