BIRD CALLS. To 8 November.

Sheffield

BIRD CALLS
by Lesley Glaister

Crucible Studio Theatre To 8 November 2003
Tue-Sat 7.45pm Mat Thu 2pm & Sat 3pm
BSL Signed 29 October
Talkback 29 October
Conversation 28 October 6.30pm
Runs 1hr 55min One interval

TICKETS: 0114 249 6000
Review: Timothy Ramsden 25 October

Regret the Crucible Studio produces a much more restricted range of new plays than in its early years is offset by seeing such good work as Sheffield-based novelist Lesley Glaister's first play.This is a fiction-writer's script in the perceptive unfolding of characters and their relationship through behaviour rather than sudden action. It's never clogged-up or let down by any novelist-turned-playwright tendency to be static, over-detailed in dialogue or too deliberately theatrical. A wisp of audience laughter near the end of act one pointed up the quiet concentration the script and emotionally-exact performances had earned throughout.

Ruby and Betty have lived half a century on a private Orkney island. Anna Calder-Marshall makes Ruby (this island's hers) all light elegance, with worries about disfiguring chin hair. Rowena Cooper's the practical one, in jeans and jacket, but production and performances have an integrity that keeps stereotype butch and lipstick lesbian at bay.

Now they face death; Betty's painful doublings-up and rushes to the outside lavatory make clear who's going first, but she's horrified at Ruby's quiet despair in arranging a joint dose of euthanasia juice. The process of nearing an agreed end is beautifully handled, without sensation or issue-waving. It remains the story of two real, suffering, loving people.

The detail works beautifully, in, for instance, Ruby's concern for niceties, and fondness for pink wafer biscuits (the row of gin bottles suggest another sustaining element). Calder-Marshall's floating, light-voiced manner is contrasted by Cooper's rugged, furrow-faced insistence, her voice always softened by affection. Jonathan Munby's production is perfectly paced, making the celebratory joint death a thing of elegiac beauty: champagne and a last waltz to the old record-player grinding out an orchestral version of Always (on a rare stage outing away from Blithe Spirit).

After perfection, a second act's risky. At first seeming intrusive, it's slighter but finally enriching. From 50 years back comes a middle-aged man with a child's voice and mind, calling like a new season announced by the birds he loves. Grandmother's brought him up but, on dying, sent him to his real mother, here. Out of the past comes a reason for a future paralleled by his mending Ruby's smashed jug. Gary Powell carries off the difficult role well and Munby handles clearly the new loving relationship replacing one that's been steady for decades.

Ruby: Anna Calder-Marshall
Betty: Rowena Cooper
Michael: Gary Powell

Director: Jonathan Munby
Designer: Mike Britton
Lighting: Oliver Fenwick
Music: Dominic Haslam
Choreographer: Scarlett Mackmin
Fight director: Terry King

2003-10-27 08:22:44