CHARLIE LAVENDER by Stewart Permutt. Southwark Playhouse to 5 January.

London

CHARLIE LAVENDER
by Stewart Permutt

Southwark Playhouse To 5 January 2002
Runs 2hr 5min One interval

TICKETS 020 7620 3494
Review Timothy Ramsden 10 December

A Christmas jewel dredged up from the Victorian Thames, this must be among the finest seasonal shows in the country.In a London passing from the age of Dickens to that of Gilbert & Sullivan a barely literate 12 year old called Charlie Lavender makes a living as a dredger, recovering valuables from the Thames. It's an honest occupation he asserts and it's certainly more honest than anything else in this intimate London panorama.

As Queen Victoria won't come to him – he's told he'll never speak with her on a royal procession down the Thames - Charlie sees no problem in going to her, climbing in through a broken Buckingham Palace window. After all, Old Seb, his friend and dredging mentor, says she's the nation's mother and the motherless Charlie needs someone's help rescuing big sister from the criminal influence of boyfriend Jim.

When Charlie (a real-life Victorian Palace intruder) is caught, he asks to see the Queen. Amazingly, he finds himself in the royal presence, in a ten minute publicity opportunity set up by Disraeli to counter the reclusive Victoria's unpopularity. With an open, unselfconscious nature caught beautifully in Aaron Johnson's performance, Charlie sits at the Queen's feet, nudges her matily and ends up giving more than he is given.

For Permutt doesn't sentimentalise; nor do director Jo Davies or designer Gemma Fripp, whose grainy Victorian photo-backed set suggests a fast-developing urban huddle through which the river flows, flavouring the story with the reality of its damp breath. Charlie ends up back with Seb, if in clean clothes and with Victoria's keepsake locket.

Victoria, the lonely monarch, is unfrozen by Charlie's honesty. He uncovers a plot hatched between the Queen's power-hungry heir and favourite woman in waiting to have her packed off to an asylum. Amanda Boxer catches precisely the change in Victoria from dry weariness, expressed both in voice and every slight shift of the regal face muscles, to someone recovering a will of her own.

There's comedy in a second, below-stairs plot with Leo Wringer's Tom simultaneously courting twin sisters, only to find his duplicity outsmarted. And if the final image, linking dredger-boy and Queen across London's social divide, doesn't grab your heart, you need a new one now.

Charlie Lavender: Daniel Bickerdike/Aaron Johnson
Seb/Disraeli/Gaoler: John Dallimore
Meg Lavender/Lady Flora Grenville: Annabelle Dowler
Gentleman/Tom: Leo Wringer
Jim/Bertie, Prince of Wales: Charles Baker
Queen Victoria: Amanda Boxer
Mrs Tapeworth/Mrs Slidepole: Amanda Orton

Director: Jo Davies
Designer: Gemma Fripp
Lighting: Colin Grenfell
Music: Gary Yershon

2001-12-12 11:02:49