CHERI. To 1 March.
Glasgow
CHERI
by Colette with Leopold Marchand translated by Robert David MacDonald, adapted by Philip Prowse
Citizens Theatre Circle Studio To 1 March 2003
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat 22 February 3pm
Runs 2hr 15min Two intervals
TICKETS 0141 429 0022
www.citz.co.uk
Review Timothy Ramsden 19 February
High-style low-down on a ragged corner of Parisian society a century back.Though she's often remembered through Maurice Chevalier smoochily thanking heaven for little girls, Colette had spent six years on stage herself before adapting her novel for the Parisian theatre in 1921. In director Philip Prowse's adaptation it presents a world - a small one - before the Great War debacle, one sometimes running on the rim of penury and always aware of the need to find funds. It's one where men sew and women weep.
At least, Stephen MacDonald's Jean-Gabriel, settled at his crotchet-work as female passions wash around, is the only contented character on stage. Younger men, both Seamus Whitty's handsome object of female desire and Carsten Hayes as his indigent acquaintance Desmond, have a relentlessly harrassed or miserable time: a few lighter inflections might have given more depth to their self-inflicted despair.
Only young Edmee, entering happy in love, might seem more pleased with life. Not for long. Estelle Morgan begins with a childlike naivety and joy, but like her 18th century predecessor, Diderot's Nun (about to follow her into the Circle Studio), she's soon oppressed by the complex of rancid emotions more life-experienced characters thrust on her. Towards the end Morgan suggests the beginnings of resilience: Edmee will emerge battered from her sheltered chrysalis to begin the journey towards the tough-exterior, near nervous collapse of her mother's world.
Here, apart from Cheri himself, there's an aviary filled with birds of prey. Led by Lea, Joanna Tope's determinedly dignified yet needy woman of a very certain age who's determined to reclaim her young man after his marriage, they include Fidelis Morgan's Charlotte,challenging the world with an embattled smile, ready at a moment to mobilise her stormtrooper vocal resources.
It's a highly-charged atmosphere of sexual pangs but Prowse introduces keen shafts of humour. And his setting, in this claustrophobic box of a theatre, is a miracle. The outer acts of Lea's home, tasteful white, pink and salmon, seem to zoom inwards for the central scene in Charlotte's home, all dark colours, oppressively intrusive plants and crowded furniture.
There's barely room to breathe in this erotic, and homoerotic, hothouse. Only the stage periphery's readily available to characters on the move - a design expression of the raw-rubbed nerves of these 'friends' under the veneer of civilisation and fashion (this year's or last). And a vivid bringing to life of Collette's distant, vanished world, one that sends shafts into the present. The clothes and manners have changed; human frustrations hardly at all.
2003-02-21 12:57:09