BEAUTIFUL THING. To 9 November.
Oldham
BEAUTIFUL THING
by Jonathan Harvey
Coliseum Theatre To 9 November 2002
Runs 2hr One interval
TICKETS 0161 624 2829
Review Timothy Ramsden 22 October
Unequal acting and slack direction mean Harvey's play makes a muffled impact.
Jonathan Harvey's drama of budding adolescent affection is notable for being about a gay relationship set, not in a liberal, leafy-suburb environment, but squarely in prime queer-bashing territory. The erogenous zone is floor 4 of a deck-access council flat-block in urban Thamesmead.
In this land, you could believe any love would have a struggle to survive, and it says a lot for Harvey that he makes every stage of self and mutual discovery between neighbours Jamie and Ste, both in their mid-teens, believable and moving. Jamie's the quiet kind, unliked at school as a soccer refusenik. Ste, the footballing action-man, is a refugee from his violent father - a violence apparently increased by suspicions about his son's sexual nature.
We never see this bad dad, but Jamie's mum Sandra is a fully-realised character. Working in a bar - it's how she finds on the grapevine the lads are frequenting a gay pub - she's bringing Jamie up on her own; dad departed long ago. But she has a new man slightly in her life.
And Susan Twist's vibrant performance brings the character fully to life. Rolling around on the floor outside her flat in energetic canoodle, flashing antagonistic wit at teen neighbour Leah, angry or sympathetic with the two lads, this is a tough, heart-alive survivor in difficult economic and social terrain.
At Oldham, you could think the play was built around her. Twist walks off with the action. not through any attempt on her part to do so, but through sheer strength of acting.
There's little energy in the two lads. Both have a physical sense of their characters' age and awkwardness: there is some good timing to give scope to the script's subtext of the developing relationship and adolescent awkwardness over strong, puzzling, sexual feelings.
But lines are rarely projected. This might be truthful in a class exercise, and something could be made of it with close-ups and mikes. But, on stage, the characters remain in their own world, the significance of their experiences kept remote in a mystic, mumbled world the other side of the stage-front proscenium arch.
Grace Kingslene has no problem with audibility: it's altogether believable she's excluded from school, getting by on a few hours home tuition weekly, absorbed completely in her - alas, somewhat tunefree - devotion to Mama Cass. But somehow the lines often seem forced: not arising from felt experience.
Alex Caan gives a led-by-the-line performance as Sandra's boyfriend: each line occurs in isolation; there's no sense of character and situation, no development to the point where Sandra dispatches him. It says a great deal for Twist as an actor that she maintains her character's coherence against this blank wall of response.
When so many details go wrong, there has to be a question about the direction, which offers little more than a sleepwalk through the script. Celia Perkins, the Coliseum's fine regular designer, offers a suitable bland flat-block exterior, though the opening of a stage section for scenes in Jamie's bedroom is rather fussy. It does create an apt intimacy for these scenes, however.
There is one fine moment, at the end, as the deck-access set opens to let the characters waltz among the stars. Schmaltzy? No. After the action's spatial restrictions, it's a lovely liberating moment - capped, alas, by a clumsy bang, presumably meant to bring them crashing back to floor four.
Tony: Alex Caan
Jamie: Harry Kent
Leah: Grace Kingslene
Ste: Phil Rowson
Sandra: Susan Twist
Director: Iqbal Khan
Designer: Celia Perkins
Lighting/Sound: Phil Davies
2002-10-26 22:10:23