CHATTERTON by Tom Kempinski. New End Theatre. To 9 December.
London
CHATTERTON
by Tom Kempinski
New End Theatre To 9 December 2001
Runs 1hr 55min One interval
TICKETS 020 7794 0022
Review Timothy Ramsden 25 November
New End's Kempinski season ends in the 18th century with art and commerce coming to blows.Seeing the lime and cream Georgian drawing-room created on New End's stage it's hard to believe the same small space has represented a Persian desert, Trojan plains and a secretive Mafia lair. Nicolai Hart Hansen's designs have been a major success of the theatre's four-play Kempinski autumn.
Love and War's the season's umbrella title. There's plenty of love in this final play, but the war is marital strife. And it's the struggle between Richard Heap's social-climbing businessman, a thief and blackmailer who represents the unacceptable face of the bourgeoisie, and 'The Marvellous Boy', the young poet Thomas Chatterton. Heap's John Bell tries to exploit Chatterton and his linguistic skills, first as advertising copywriter, then in the humble role of clerk.
Everything's commodity to Bell; not just his wife Kitty, who Chatterton is hired to educate for polite society, but the love that develops between poet and wife and which Bell is happy to manipulate for his own advantage.
Heap's bull-thug Bell charges through the elegant room, and the action, shrewdly calculating others' motives and bullying them relentlessly. Robert Sterne's fragile figure puts up a lightly voiced protest against his opponent's roar. Sterne stepped into the role at a few days' notice and it was announced he would still be reading the part. He had learned it, and gave a good sense of the poet. The interpretation may well deepen as the run proceeds but the character is there already, a soft exterior overlaying a steely determination to write poetry for as long, or short, a time as life lasts.
After initial uncertainties, James Pearse, who has given strong performances earlier in the season, made what could be of the lightly-sketched part of Kitty's worker father, reliant upon Bell for his place in the world. It's a sign of his anger that he finally breaks the mirror he initially hung over the fireplace to reflect Bell in his aggrandising self-satisfaction.
Viss Elliot is good as the servant, Bell's spy and sexual plaything. Joanna Marks suffers fulsomely as the wife whose love for her children is used against her, though there's something tentative about her performance which Diana Hillier's competent direction might have helped overcome.
Annie J.: Viss Elliot
John Bell: Richard Heap
Kitty: Joanna Marks
Thomas Chatterton: Robert Sterne
Georger Austin: James Pearse
Director: Diana Hillier
Designer: Nicolai Hart Hansen
Lighting: Sebastian Williams
Composer: Edmund Jolliffe
2001-11-26 01:19:16