COMMANDING VOICES. To 7 July.
London
COMMANDING VOICES
by Robert Eddison
New End Theatre To 7 July 2002
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat & Sun 3.30pm
Runs 2hr 15min One interval
TICKETS 020 7794 0022
Review Timothy Ramsden 9 June
Well-acted, this clear account of a medical case-history needs to allow characters more room to develop in their own rights.First, an apology to author Robert Eddison, New End Theatre and visitors to this review. Owing to both a motorway and a major road being closed off, I missed the opening 15 minutes of this production. What follows tries to take account of that and comment only on what was seen. But be warned: what follows may not be the whole truth – quite.
Ben, you'd think, has everything: a chance of Oxford, a coveted place at the Slade, a wealthy background. Mother's a concert pianist, with a career on hold to bring him up; father's a high-flyer academic lured into politics with a governmental post in the offing. Yet, drawing on experience, playwright Eddison shows Ben's collapse into obsessive compulsive disorder.
His slow rise out of its clutch comes only with taking control of his life back from his over-assertive father. In his own, non-medical way, Edward Davenport is as obsessed as his son, fixated on success by his own – and his own father's – criteria. Ben's an artist in the making; his father insists he turns down the Slade for politics at Oxford.
He insists on going for the best in medical care; by which he means the most expensive – while, all the time, it's John Burgess's beaming friend and GP who has the solution. And Ben's French girlfriend from Oxford instantly sees the young man's an artist in the making, something his father's scale of values refuses to recognise.
As yet, Eddison writes the issue, not the situations through which issues develop. His generally short scenes present Ben's fall and rise clearly enough; the life-curdling obsession with the precise layout of a pair of shoes is vivid. But the psychology of this – his father throwing the shoes at Ben in an angry fit – while it may be accurate, even historically correct, seems to lay life out on too neat a dramatic drawing-board.
Though Burgess brings a lifelike joviality to humanise the role, he can't hide his character's label as nice doctor – all humanity and vegetable stew – starkly opposed to Gregory Cox's nasty doctor, all self-importance and bullying.
And Jeremy Child's starchy, unlistening self-assurance melts all too comprehensively – though Eddison avoids over-defining the precise moment here. To begin listening to his family is enough; to throw in a political conversion, from hard-line social security minister to the good guy who puts ambition second to restoring benefits for the disabled makes him too good to ring dramatically true.
Ben Davenport: Glyn Williams
Helen Davenport: Katherine Hogarth
Edward Davenport MP: Jeremy Child
Dr George Bradley: John Burgess
Piers Murray: James Puddephatt
Claire Gaultier: Isobel Pravda
Dr Henry Grubshaw: Gregory Cox
Director: Richard Howard
Designer: Alex Marker
Lighting: James Whiteside
2002-06-13 05:14:34