BILLY LIAR. To 25 February.
Liverpool
BILLY LIAR
by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall
Liverpool Playhouse To 25 February 2006
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 2pm & 23 Feb 1.30pm
Runs 2hr 15mon One interval
TICKETS: 0151 709 4776
www.everymanplayhouse.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden
Truth to tell, a fine revival.
Billy Liar was a hero of his (1959) time. His rejection of suburban conformity and his youthful ambitions formed a potent fuse for the soon-to-be sixties. But it wasn’t such fun being Billy’s parents, or a girl who loved him, or his friend. Or employer. And what does Billy actually do? Writes a few jokes for a comedian and comes back home instead of making his midnight tryst on a London train.
Phil Wilmott’s Liverpool revival sympathises with Billy, without turning him into a hero. Michael Imerson’s Billy is often on the back-foot, particularly when girls come calling. He needs all the appearance of sincerity, all the cheery energy, he can find to see him through his crises.
There’s no trace of malice; how could there be from someone in those pink candy-striped pyjama bottoms? His fantasies and aspirations are signalled by snatches of Noel Coward’s ‘Mad About the Boy’, a double-edged title here. But if Billy has an element of madness, the reasons are all around, in the tiers of suburban dream-homes stacked around the stage, or the maddeningly-repeated pattern on the Fisher household’s wallpaper in Christopher Woods’ cut-away design.
Billy’s 3 girlfriends differ markedly. Victoria Gee’s Barbara is a caricature of home-making, passionless dependency, gawpingly unaware, behind her bright-red lipstick, of the impression she creates. If there’s something 2-dimensional about Jessica Harris’s Rita, it’s due to the teenage whirlwind herself, no slouch at sticking up for herself, while Natalie Gumede’s Liz offers a quieter, deeper, more enigmatic relationship. It’s here the next decade lightly beckons.
Certainly not in Billy’s family itself. As with Billy’s women, the styles vary. Christine Ozanne’s grandmother Florence, talking to the furniture, is a comic old grump, while David Houndslow’s father has an understandable impatience with his son. But Kerry Peers gives Billy’s mother true depth. Here is someone working hard, showing determined love surviving decades of routine, encouraging Barbara with a smile, alarmed and outraged by Rita’s intrusion and respectably fearful of the different Liz. Anxiety and anger variously invade Alice’s face as she works to maintain peace and order; a superb portrayal.
Barbara: Victoria Gee
Liz: Natalie Gumede
Rita: Jessica Harris
Geoffrey Fisher: David Hounslow
Billy Fisher: Michael Imerson
Florence: Christine Ozanne
Alice Fisher: Kerry Peers
Arthur Crabtree: Shane Zaza
Director: Phil Wilmott
Designer: Christopher Woods
Lighting: Hansjorg Schmidt
Sound: Jennifer Tallon-Cahill
Dialect coach: Terry Besson
Assistant director: Serdar Bilis
2006-02-21 12:01:52