CHAINS. To 15 December.

Richmond.

CHAINS
by Elizabeth Baker

Orange Tree Theatre To 15 December 2007.
Mon-Sat 7,45pm Mat Sat 4pm
Runs 2hr 20min One interval.

TICKETS: 020 8940 3633.
www.orangetreetheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 8 December.

Ties that bind under the microscope.
When Elizabeth Baker’s drama was premiered in 1909 A R Orage’s progressive journalThe New Age called it a great drama. It’s a salutary reminder; we’re still over-praising plays that catch something of the time’s temper.

Yet Chains builds a considered, if partisan, contrast between conformity with its dulling effect, and the spirit of adventure that drives some people over the hills and far away, and leaves many more staring wistfully through their windows.

Baker’s limitations are an inability to give her characters the final shove of independence from her theme or to make any deeper point about compromise, as Ibsen had done.

But she clearly draws the life of London clerks, persuaded by routine and financial commitments into Conservatism, fearing any challenging idea might be Socialism, while trudging along on their treadmills in the face of wage-reductions and rent increases - financial pressures that bring lodgers intruding on the Wilsons’ domestic bliss.

It’s one of these, aptly-named Fred Tenant, who decides to try his luck in Australia. When they learn he’s leaving, everyone assumes it’s to marry, that he’s inherited money or, learning he’s off to “the colonies”, that he has a firm career prospect. No-one can believe he’s just off to try his luck.

There’s no clearer indication of the mindset in this social strata, its young members’ future seen in the darning, dozing Massey parents. Gabrielle Lloyd’s Mrs Massey says she always loved her husband with the slow, puzzled expression of someone who’s never thought anything else possible. Dudley Hinton’s Percy never questions spending his life in a job he dislikes.

But the young are at the heart of Baker’s polemic. Auriol Smith’s detailed production charts them, centred on Justin Avoth’s moustached clerk Charley, torn between home and away, itchily examining Tenant’s map of Australia, and his cheerfully contented wife Lily, in whom Amy Noble catches flickers of anxiety among the smiles.

Smith opens with a procession of identikit clerks, contrasted by Octavia Walters’ Maggie, who determines to choose between security and adventure, while Sam Dowson’s set neatly suggests confinement in its fine detail of class and period.

Charley Wilson: Justin Avoth.
Lily Wilson: Amy Noble.
Fred Tenant: Ashley George.
Maggie Massey: Octavia Walters.
Morton Leslie: Mark Frost.
Sybil Frost: Zoe Thorne.
Percy Massey: Dudley Hinton.
Alfred Massey: Col Farrell.
Mrs Massey: Gabrielle Lloyd.
Fenwick: Morton Symes.
Walter Foster: Patrick Marlowe.

Director: Auriol Smith.
Designer: Sam Dowson.
Lighting: John Harris.
Costume: Jude Stedham
Assistant director: John Rolph.

2007-12-10 01:36:46