AUDACITY. To 25 September.
London
AUDACITY
by Simon Mawdsley
Jermyn Street Theatre To 25 September 2004
Tue-Sat 8pm Mat Sat & Sun 4pm
Runs 2hr 20min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7287 2875
Review: Timothy Ramsden 30 August
Some laughs and neat plot turns but uneven pacing in a new comedy-thriller.A wily character in Willy Russell's play Breezeblock Park reports having saved time at a performance of Waiting for Godot. At the interval he'd looked in the programme and found no credit for an actor playing Godot, so knew he wouldn't arrive. It's a useful lesson about audience members who go for plot alone. Titles can mislead people here, leading to one thriller-fan's disappointment with a drama promisingly called Death of a Salesman.
In Simon Mawdsley's Audacity three salesmen see the death of their hopes. All are members of the affluently impoverished: either losing a job through momentary indiscretion, losing a wife and facing high maintenance payments, or keeping a wife upon whom must be lavished ever-more costly possessions.
It's this that leads the varied types driving-force Philip, politely reticent John and streetwise Dave to join a department store heist. Mawdsley is conscientious in explaining details of the robbery, and creates some humour through the trio's varying temperaments. Though it seems he has least interest in John; James Petherick is saddled with moments of sitting silent and some pretty flat fill-in lines in places.
Both Philip and Dave are more assertive, easier meat for the playwright. But for all, complications set in when two of their wives turn up. Mawdsley has some fun with the women's responses, and conscientiously produces some late-action plot revelations.
But the long first scene takes time to build any tension, not helped by Mawdsley's deliberately-paced production. There's a lack of quick response (least perhaps in the case of Dave, but he's the most openly fast-lane character) that makes for sluggishness.
And it's extremely tricky mixing tension and humour. The two need to complement each other, humour somehow fuelling tension. Here, that's only fitfully achieved. So inefficient is the last-minute practice for the robbery that anyone with enough sense to carry it off ought to have put it off on the spot. Incredulity at such a point may raise laughs, but it dissipates tension.
There's some talk about the amorality of the times, but it's the kind of general point that every generation makes. It could count as philosophy on celluloid. Audacity's being developed as a film. With editing and location switches (designer Brett Stevens defines dank and seedy in his run-down London basement set) some of the structural awkwardness and unevenness of pacing may be removed. Let's see.
Philip: Neil Bird
John: James Petherick
Dave: Ian Attfield
Gemma: Caroline George
Gillian: Hilary Burns
Director: Simon Mawdsley
Designer: Brett Stevens
Lighting: Mike Penketh
Sound: John French
Music: JJ Burnel
2004-09-01 16:41:13