CHAINS OF DEW. To 26 April.
London.
CHAINS OF DEW
by Susan Glaspell.
Orange Tree Theatre To 5 April; 12, 19, 21-26 April 2008.
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Sat 4pm & 24 April (+ discussion) 2.30pm.
Audio-described 1 April, 5 April 4pm.
Runs 2hr 35min One interval.
TICKETS: 020 8940 3633.
www.orangetreetheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 17 March.
Chains has strong claims on our attention.
A month ago the Orange Tree’s grant was threatened. Now it shows how vital a theatre it is, reviving American Susan Glaspell’s unpublished play - unseen since its 1922 premiere.
It’s in the social tradition of Granville Barker or Shaw. If the male characters are more transparent than the central females, that’s no more than a mirror-image of most male playwrights’ work. And if Kate Saxon’s production makes one greedy to see more revivals, it’s not due to any fault in her work (which strikes only one false note, a swishing guillotine sound at the end that seems a director’s over-obvious imposition).
It’s because characters and situations are so intriguing you want to see them tried different ways. How much of a hypocrite should Seymour Standish seem? A progressive poet among the New York intelligentsia, he’s a pillar of conventional respectability back in the Midwest. David Annen gives him an anxiety rising towards panic as his New York acquaintances invade his home-life.
How deep does each conversion of mind go in his wife Diantha (like A Doll’s House’s Nora she’s been patronised by father, then husband, who’ve nicknamed her Dotty)? And so on.
Glaspell clashes viewpoints together around the energetic Nora Powers’ advocacy of birth control. It takes time to realise she’s the only New York character who espouses such (then illegal) ‘Family Limitation’.
There’s plentiful comedy; forward-thinking Irishman O’Brien’s surprised to find he’s taken to be supporting an idea he’s been criticising, while Nora has fun shocking Seymour’s respectable friends with her passionate advocacy. Ruth Everett’s vivid Nora, in flaming red with sensible brown shoes, slithers freely beneath her dress as if determined being female won’t restrict her.
She finds an unlikely ally in Seymour’s mother (Helen Ryan, intelligently assured), whose doll-making has its own radical coding. Then, as Diantha revels in the new-found freedom represented by her bobbed hair (this most kindest cut of all is the biggest snip in literature since The Rape of the Lock), Glaspell swings attitudes round, leaving a darker tone amid the laughter, something she manages with the hand of a skilled, deep intelligence.
Nora Powers: Ruth Everett.
Leon Whittaker: Charles Daish.
James O’Brien: Gwynfor Jones.
Seymore Standish: David Annen.
Dotty Stansdish: Katie McGuinness.
Symore’s Mother: Helen Ryan.
Mrs M: Nancy Crane.
Edith: Pia de Keyser.
Dean Davis: Alister Cameron.
Maid: Lisa Armytage.
Director: Kate Saxon.
Designer: Tim Meacock.
Lighting: Leanne Simmonds.
Sound: Stuart Burgess.
Movement advisor: Sue Lefton.
Voice coach: Stephen Kemble.
Assistant director: Katie Henry.
2008-03-20 02:29:49