CALICO.

London

CALICO
by Michael Hastings

Duke of York's Theatre To 3 April 2004
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed & Sat 2.30pm
Runs 2hr 30min One interval

TICKETS: 0870 060 6623
Minicom 020 7369 1762
0870 534 4444 (ticketmaster 24 hour credit card bookings)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 4 March

Possibilities, possibilities tantalisingly kept out of focus.In 1928 Paris the century's most laconic writer becomes secretary of words' to its most verbally fecund. Young Samuel Beckett's still to commit to paper, but James Joyce is on his life-lasting Odyssey round Europe, setting up homes and reshaping English - not that he's above obeying the dinner-gong's siren sound, announcing the arrival of his wife' Nora Barnacle.

There's something's missing from this new play, by a writer who hit the nail head-on with T.S. Eliot's private life in Tom and Viv. Joyce, Becket and Eliot's work's all had people asking What's it mean?'. With Hastings, the question is: What's it for?'.

Two dramatic possibilities of the crazy Joycean ménage are stated but not developed. As Joyce's daughter Romola Garai looms awkwardly over her parents, her disordered mind leading to impulsive movement till, after multiple diagnoses suggesting a medical profession mixing charlatanry and desperation, she's finally restrained. But the character seems waiting for a script to delve behind her restless fantasising.

Daniel Weyman's Beckett remains less enigmatic than anonymous. We know where Beckett ended up, in literary terms (his gloomy Endgame's about to open at the Albery, turning St Martin's Lane into Beckett Way). But suggesting this benevolent man's sparse language comes from the shock of Lucia's dementia is forcing an unpersuasive case.

This leaves one theme: the gap between literature and daily existence, the dramatically tantalising picture of a disorderly family seeking respectability. Dermot Crowley's James Joyce stands magnificently silent amid the squabblings, lost for words he hasn't made up yet, only joining in when mighty matters of abstract principle crop up.

Imelda Staunton paints a multi-hued Nora. Viciously defensive, anxiously aggressive and smilingly placatory, she's the only character to come alive. Operatic son Giorgio and his wealthy US woman seem there merely because history says they were.

Edward Hall's production with a two-tier set that makes it seem the impoverished Joyces are renting somewhere the size of the Gare du Nord - seeks to cover the play's difficulties with production grandeur people running around, sweeping staging gestures where focus and concentration might have retrieved more coherence.

But workshopping and rewrites might have achieved more.

Thomas MacGreevy: Robert Portal
Samuel Beckett: Daniel Weyman
Giorgio Joyce: Jamie Beamish
Lucia Joyce: Romola Garai
James Joyce: Dermot Crowley
Nora Barnacle: Imelda Staunton
Helen Fleischman: Issy Van Randwyck
Pianist: Helen Washington
Maid: Elaine Heathfield

Director: Edward Hall
Designer: Francis O'Connor
Lighting: Ben Ormerod
Sound: Matt McKenzie for Autograph
Music: Mick Sands
Movement: Cathy Marston
Dialect: Joan Washington
Fight director: Malcolm Ranson
Associate director: Heather Davies

2004-03-08 15:36:38