BRENDAN AT THE CHELSEA. To 3 February.

London.

BRENDAN AT THE CHELSEA
by Janet Behan.

Riverside Studios (Studio 2) To 3 February 2008.
Tue-Sat 8pm Sun 7.30pm Mat Sat 3pm.
Runs 2hr 25min One interval.

TICKETS: 020 8237 1111.
www.riversidestudios.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 20 January.

A play that assumes rather than invokes interest in its subject.
Once he was hell-raising Behan, of the IRA and E15. Now, it’s more Brendan Who-the-hell-cares? Even if he, rather than director Joan Littlewood (an auteur director if ever), is fully credited with the plays that made his name in Britain, they’re rarely performed now. The Quare Fellow (May 1956 contemporary of Look Back in Anger) came over as tame in Oxford Stage Company’s revival a few years back.

And what is the Chelsea? You’d need to know, or see the production flyer (the programme’s silent on this as on much else) to be aware it’s a “Bohemian” New York hotel; though more mildewed-dowdy in the uncredited Riverside design.

And its flyer-advertised milieu gets little look-in: Arthur Miller rates one mention in a nightmare-scene, Ornette Coleman’s visible by his absence, while “the symphony of 24th Street” is as symphonic as a suburban cul-de-sac.

A shame, for something evoking the once-powerful Behan presence might make a mighty-fine drama. Once it was a privilege to have Behan drunk at your party (as it was to have playwright-thief Genet nick your silverware in Paris). Where, indeed, are they now?

This production might have helped itself by taking residence in the smaller Riverside 3. Audiences could have fitted more snugly, and there would have been no need to spread Behan’s room across the wide Studio 2 space (New York Bohemian making up in extent what it lacks in style).

There are good moments, including abusive letters written to Behan. The drink’s evident enough, but the drunk, inevitably, has limited interest. The politics is absent. What, anyway, did Brendan do in the sixties except lie around on his fame, a drunken, dying diabetic fast-tracking to early death?

Adrian Dunbar is a fitfully powerful presence, though perhaps he was unwise also to co-direct. The best moments come from Brid Brennan as Brendan’s wife, left behind by her husband’s trailblaze to destruction but, in Brennan’s performance, given depth as she tries to recover the magic that led to their marriage, with a sense of enduring almost beyond endurance.

Brendan: Adrian Dunbar.
Lianne: Eva Crompton.
George: Jonathan Tafler.
Don: Joel Dommett.
Beatrice: Brid Brennan.

Directors: Adrian Dunbar, Rosalind Scanlon.
Lighting: Scott Stewart.
Sound: Jason Ryall.
Costume Design: Anna Calligaro.

2008-01-23 11:07:26