CANARIES SOMETIMES SING: till 10 August

London

CANARIES SOMETIMES SING
by Frederick Lonsdale

Old Red Lion To 10 August 2003
Tue-Sat 8pm Sun 3pm
Runs 1hr 55min One interval

TICKETS: 020 7837 7816
Review: Timothy Ramsden 27 July

A lively revival of a sceptical play that captures the essentials.
While West End theatres house shows that reflect forms, styles and lengths born in the fringe, fringe theatres are reviving former West End mainstays. Between the two 20th century wars Freddy Lonsdale was not far behind West End pen-giants Noel Coward and Somerset Maugham. Yet here he is in an Islington pub theatre, courtesy of Open Door productions.

Their stripped-down version on Naomi Dawson's functional set employs just a quartet of main characters and two marriages. Disaster accordingly looms, and gets avoided in what now seems cosy safety, but was doubtless once moral daring. Lonsdale's best known today for On Approval, with its proposition that couples should find out about each other before tying the knot.

These couples didn't and are left like the caged canary popular playwright Geoffrey Lymes (a sell-out in both senses) contemplates as the action opens. His artistic wife, spending his royalties on dinners for chaps whose plays don't make them a bean, falls for Geoffrey's best friend Ernest.

Ernest, needless to say, is chafing away with his chorus-girl wife (the men, inevitably, form the plot's focus), who takes a mutual shine to Geoffrey. Jeremy Bond's cast play with an apt stylistic sense. It's often amusing, Mark Gillis taking up the opportunities for put-downs which his commercially successful playwright-creator gives him, Lydia Piechowiak responding with what would be cut-glass manner and clipped tones except there's no breach in the glass wall of private recrimination and public togetherness she displays.

Stocky and ever willing to please, Glen Supple's Ernest is the follower, the fitter-in in black tie, toting a comforting cocktail while Geoffrey plans and leads. Emily Smith (who with Piechowiak started Open Door out of Bristol) completes the quartet as a blowsily glamorous show-girl, with an eye to her chances, an ear to any closed door and a mouth ever-ready to open.

It's clear, pacy and good fun. Direction and playing tend to the obvious. Sometimes more relaxation, a sense of thought going on, of realisation rather than pre-packed ideas could give the plot twists a greater coherence. But cold-heartedness is a better excess with Lonsdale than warm-bloodedness.

Geoffrey Lymes: Mark Gillis
Anne Lymes: Lydia Piechowiak
Ernest Melton: Glen Supple
Elma Melton: Emily Smith

Director: Jeremy Bond
Designer: Naomi Dawson
Lighting: Julian McCready
Music: Benjamin Wolf

2003-07-30 09:10:51