BYE BYE BLUES & DOUBLE DOUBLE. To 4 February.

London

BYE BYE BLUES and DOUBLE DOUBLE
by James Saunders

Orange Tree Theatre To 4 February 2006
Mon 30 Jan-Wed 1 Feb, Sat 4 Feb 7.45pm
Runs 1hr 50min One interval

TICKETS: 020 8940 3633
Wwww.orangetreetheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 28 January

Intrigue and humour in contrasting double-bill.
Sam Walters and his Orange Tree complete their winter tribute to regular Richmond play-provider James Saunders (1925-2004) with a second-deck of double-bills sandwiched within the run of the Vanbrugh/Saunders comedy A Journey to London.

Here’s more variety, in length, setting and style than in the other fascinating pairing, After Liverpool and Games, still in rep with this coupling till 4 February. Bye Bye Blues, just over a half-hour in length, is teasingly abstract, its couples based at three separate, identical round tables, each dominated by a bottle of whisky and a telephone.

Its conversations follow a road accident involving the sighting of an elusive woman called Anne. ‘Phones ring, suggested allegiances are teasingly provoked without any definite linking between calls made and those received. Meanwhile, there’s talk of freedom between partners at the same table. Admissions of guilt over the accident and possible evasions abound in this deceptive web of conversations.

Double Double is very different, a real-time comedy covering lunch-hour in a bus-staff canteen. It’s the only one of these 4 one-actors to give its characters names. These were the days (1962) when buses had crews of 2, and Saunders artfully has each actor play 2 more-or-less contrasting characters. With John Paul Connelly, this is the younger driver seeing himself growing into an older colleague, acclimatised to routine.

Or there’s Claudia Elmhirst’s head-girl-style conductress, an enlightened lunchtime reader, contrasting canteen-worker Lilian for whom nothing matters and who’s not going to let anyone criticise her. Paul Goodwin neatly contrasts the lifestyles of one bus’s twosome, loose-shirted bolshie assertion versus tight-collared, fag-packed mouth, while Mairead Carty offers excellent portraits of unassertive women, Lilian’s subservient kitchen-help and the conductress who knows who knows but hardly brings herself to say which driver she’d rather go to the pictures with.

Robert Benfield’s splenetic, rule-by-ulcer manager and wayward driver (the Stoppardian-named Dogg) may seem too close to each other in manner. But Peter Forbes’ production picks up the vivacity and serious comedy of humanity where uniforms and regular routes cover individual fears and hopes. An exemplary tribute from the Orange Tree to their lost friend.

Bye Bye Blues
Cast: Joanna Van Gyseghem, Thomas Wheatley, Fiona Mollison, John Hodgkinson, Nick Earnshaw, Sophie Trott

Director: Sam Walters

Double Double
Nelly/Lilian: Claudia Elmhirst
Grunge/Pumfret: Paul Goodwin
Fran/Iris: Mairead Carty
Inspector/Bert Dogg: Robert Benfield
Nimrod/Gimlet: John Paul Connelly

Director: Peter Forbes

Designer: Sam Dowson
Lighting: Kevin Leach
Assistant directors: Imogen Bond, Amy Hodge

2006-01-30 00:54:14