BILLY LIAR. To 17 July.

Milton Keynes/Stoke-on-Trent

BILLY LAR
by Keith Waterhouse and willis Hall

Milton Keynes Theatre To 10 July 2004
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 2.30pm
then Regent Theatre Stoke-on-Trent 12-17 July
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Wed & Sat 2.30pm
BSL Signed 15 July
Runs 2hr 5min One interval

TICKETS: 01908 606090
www.miltonkeynestheatre.com (Milton Keynes)
0870 060 6649 (booking fee Stoke-on-Trent)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 7 July

Bright revival could do with a more forceful centre.For every Jimmy Porter in 1956, waging war on the complacent class, there would have been numerous Billy Fishers still in 1959. Unfocused, lives idling, their wit and discontent used to survive the daily routines of family and dead-end job in youth's last drab decade.

Billy's job's a literal dead-end dogsbody at an undertakers, flinging away the future in the form of company calendars he couldn't be bothered to dispatch. Yet in Anna Linstrum's fast-paced revival, the surrounds that seem more alive than the fantasising protagonist.

The show opens on a near-Absurd note. Grandmother Florence famously talks to the sideboard (she might as well; nobody else listens). But Billy's mum also seems to be talking to the air. It's several moments before a realistic Saturday morning breakfast falls into place.

Linstrum's cast catch the feel of a family routine almost running on auto-pilot. It's followed by other surprise, revelatory moments. Paul Copley brings his usual sympathy to the ever-swearing Geoffrey, giving him an understandable frustration at his son's ways. But it's this forceful expostulator who enters the loudest row of the play with the quiet news of granny's demise. Then there are the final act's moments when he tentatively offers a touch of comfort, hesitantly reaching for his wife like a nervous first-date boyfriend.

Actors like Copley, Doreen Mantel and others could probably play these parts in their sleep, but they never give that impression. Two performances are especially fine. Tracie Bennett's Alice brings the range of expressions of a multi-tasking mother to the part, showing a depth of concern for Billy. And Rachel Leskovac makes her dumpily uxorious Barbara, dowdy in dress and hair as the Fisher family living-room is in décor, a peach of a performance. Though it's orange segments she keeps downing, showing a fifties complacency only confirmed by her disapproval when Billy's straying hand or vaguely worded suggestions nudge her from her comfort zone.

Amidst these, Ralf Little's Billy is a handsome but neutral presence, his multiple appeal to local women presumably more pin-up than personality. The dreamer's there but not the fifties fire of youthful rebellion.

Florence Boothroyd: Doreen Mantle
Geoffrey Fisher: Paul Copley
Alice Fisher: Tracie Bennett
Billy Fisher: Ralf Little
Arthur Crabtree: Matt Hickey
Barbara: Rachel Leskovac
Rita: Sarah Churm
Liz: Joanna Page

Director: Anna Linstrum
Designer: Norman Coates
Lighting: Leonard Tucker
Sound: Ed Brimley
Music: Jeremy Sams

2004-07-08 07:43:47