BREAD AND BUTTER by C.P. Taylor. Southwark Playhouse to 1 December.

London

BREAD AND BUTTER
by C.P. Taylor

Dumbfounded Theatre at Southwark Playhouse To 1 December 2001
Runs 2hr 10min One interval

TICKETS 020 7620 3494
Review Timothy Ramsden 24 November

Splendid revival of a fine play you don't have to be Jewish or Glaswegian to enjoy.Bread and Butter is jam from yesterday. A 35 year old play that covers 34 years, it opens back in 1931. Taylor, a Glasgow-born member of a Jewish family, sets the action in the old Gorbals tenements south of the River Clyde, but with a broad, humane sympathy that makes his honest, unflashy play shine in Mark Rosenblatt's well-paced yet rightly unglossy production.

Hard to believe, but it is possible to make a play out of people who lived before mobile 'phones and wouldn't know a cappuccino if it dribbled down their noses. And if the play shows its age by focusing on the two male characters, with their wives coming and dying as fits, Taylor makes each of his Jewish quartet count in their own right.

Central though is Alec, the factory worker with a dogged belief in his friend Morris, the communist son of the boss who is having difficulty getting the union card he covets. If there's a weakness in the production, it's the guying of Morris, the dreamer of schemes for humanity who never bothers himself with those around him. Gerald Lepkowski leads the character like a bulldozer through the period between those two prime ministerial disappointments of socialism, Ramsay Macdonald and Harold Wilson. As it's been impossible to believe that Morris could believe in his wrongheaded, short-lived plans, his later bitterness and disappointments register less vividly.

Pulling at Alec from the other side is his wife Miriam, a sternly practical soul in Louise Yates' performance. She's an individualist, fretting against rationing and denying a slice of her Co-op dividend to the children's hospital fund.

Emma D' Inverno is good as Morris's tolerant spouse, the least developed character. But the show's glory resides in Michael Wilson's Alec. This quiet soul, willing to bear responsibility, trusting in others, a lover of birds who fills his widowerhood walking the dog, should be a theatrical walk-on of a character. That he's not, and bears the force of humanity through a third of a troubled century, is a tribute to Taylor, Rosenblatt and the quiet authority Wilson brings to the role.

Alec: Michael Wilson
Miriam: Louise Yates
Morris: Gerald Lepkowski
Sharon: Emma D' Inverno

Director: Mark Rosenblatt
Designer: Angela Simpson
Lighting: Oliver Fenwick
Composer: Alex Gallafent

2001-11-26 01:26:03