COOKING WITH ELVIS. To 18 October.
Bolton
COOKING WITH ELVIS
by Lee Hall
Octagon Theatre To 18 October
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 4,11,15 October 2pm
Audio-described 8 October
BSL Signed 17 October
Runs 2hr 10min One interval
TICKETS: 01204 520661
Review: Timothy Ramsden 3 October
Finely-produced comedy for the age of loudness and anorexia.Live in Tyneside, Lee Hall's comedy must have been dynamite. I caught it (flabbily tasteless yet leaving a bad taste in the mind) marooned in the West End with alleged star-casting. In Bolton, Mark Babych's well-cast production kick the comedy back into full-flavoured life.
The tastelessness is deliberate, climaxing, so to speak, in young baker Stuart masturbating the brain-damaged husband of the 38 year old English teacher with whom he's sharing a bed - and a daughter. The scene produced a groan somewhere in the audience that was nowhere near ecstasy - somewhere, rather, between agony and disbelief.
It is, here, very funny - and painful too. Socially incompetent Stuart is a comic enough figure, but ageing Mam, two years with a physically redundant husband following a road accident, mixes comically aggressive dialogue with suburban tragedy. Through no fault of her own, she's left with life passing her by, devoid of life's ordinary satisfactions: laughter, drink and sex.
What moves the farcical comedy to a different level, is the element that contrasts the daily reality - though this never disappears. (Scene from Mr and Mrs Hall senior's life: 'Woor's oor Lee?' 'Upstairs, practising his magical realism').
For dad was previously an Elvis impersonator, low-level night-time incarceration of a million fantasy lives which find it unbearable the King is no more, still hankering after the pop idol whose private life was a denial of health fads worldwide.
I've seen more convincing stage paraplegics than Terence Mann; it's unclear how much mental activity's going on behind his immobile yet composed features. But when he bursts into Elvis-life he's fine (though Babych risks turning Hall's end into a compilation musical - something clearly all right by Bolton's Octagon-goers)
Libby Davison's strong, keeping up the keen comic edge in her opening attempt at seducing her 12-year younger hopeless fancy man. David Raynor gives him a well-judged innocence - though the sex scene with Dad tends to happen without apparent motivation. Is it kindness, apathy or merely completing a family collection that drives Stuart on?
There's the most comically cruel use of a tortoise since Stoppard and Jumpers; the creature's tripped over, trodden on and served up between the characters. Which brings us to the performanceof the evening, Viktoria Kay's 14-year old Jill. Fascinated with cookery, persecuted by her mother for turning into an unappealing dumpling herself, she sets out to prove she can get her man in the unpromising form of Stuart. Kay brings a determined edge - showing she's Mam's daughter - to her fury when Stuart abandons her after she's boasted of her anonymous boyfriend.
Hall makes Jill our link to his world; she announces each scene in a stir-fry of location, event, quotation and theme. Flanked by Beryl-the-Peril hair, Jill develops from victim to aggressor. But her eating, like Mam's alcohol and anorexia lifestyle, is a reminder of the pain underlying their comic human attempts to find contentment or, heaven help them, happiness.
Mark Babych's well-paced production keeps the mix at boiling-point, stirring Hall's rich ingredients into a lump-free dish served up with elan. And in Viktoria Kay, he's found a superbly resourceful performer who stands our even in this strong company.
Mam: Libby Davison
Jill: Viktoria Kay
Dad/Elvis: Terence Mann
Stuart: David Raynor
Director: Mark Babych
Designer: Neil Irish
Lighting: Thomas Weir
Sound: Andy Smith
2003-10-04 18:11:11