COUNTRY MAGIC To 9 May.
London.
COUNTRY MAGIC
by Arthur Wing Pinero.
Finbiorough Theatre above The Finborough Road Brasserie 118 Finborough Road SW10 9ED To 9 May 2009.
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat & Sun 3pm.
Runs 1hr 50min One interval.
TICKETS: 0844 847 1652 (24hr no booking fee).
www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk (reduction on full-price tickets booked online)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 24 April.
Theatrical surprise has force, if not in all performances.
It’s Pinero, theatregoers – but not as we know him. Far from his Victorian farces and society dramas, this 1921 post-Great War ‘fable’ may not breathe direct experience of trench-horrors, but it captures the disillusion of the wounded remarkably for a non-combatant in his mid-sixties.
The love-triumphant conclusion might have seemed glib to the wounded or bereaved, and still seem a cop-out today. Yet Pinero’s acknowledgment of the internal rage of the blighted was significant, preceding Somerset Maugham’s bitter For Services Rendered by over a decade – beside being an example of Pinero’s late-career formal experiments in theatre with its mix of external and internal realities.
Blinded in combat, John Hillgrove visits fellow-soldier Oliver Bashforth, who’s hiding away in the country - at a Bed & Breakfast place, as Robin Don’s punctured-frame design shows amid a flight a harsh-edged shrapnel fragments. Hillgrove’s calm acceptance of his state contrasts Bashforth’s anger at his own mutilation. The ’fabulous’ central section shows the physically unattractive local lass he marries becoming unaccountably attractive, while he recovers his mobility.
So the story goes; until it crashes down as the Bashforths gather to see this miracle for themselves. By then, Phil Wilmott’s production has declared the fantasy element openly through the image of a grand marriage service (Wilmott has adapted Pinero’s original, called The Enchanted Cottage).
There’s something to be desired in the acting. For some reason Paul Critoph’s local cleric keeps singing his one-hymn repertoire to his ever-pregnant wife. And while the cast capture the superficiality of those who never fought, they give it little shading or depth.
Yet Wilmott ensures key moments impress; the repeated reminders to those who forget such details that Hillgrove is blind, the moment Bashforth, whose recovered self is awaited, painfully limps into view, while his wife’s stooping awkwardness remains evident as ever.
Daniel Abelson gives Bashforth a fierce, penetrating anger, Moir Leslie provides welcome focus and restraint to his mother. And Nicola Wright’s black-clad, tight-featured housekeeper, is taut and restrained, even when her own hidden grief emerges. These well-observed qualities in Wright’s performance give the taciturn Mrs Minnett a tragic intensity.
Laura Pennington: Victoria Gee.
Mrs Minnett: Nicola Wright.
John Hillgrove: Jamie Hinde.
Oliver Bashforth: Daniel Abelson.
Reverend Corsellis: Paul Critoph.
Mrs Corellis: Sarah Feathers.
Mrs Smallwood: Moir Leslie.
Rupert Smallwood: Andrew Boxer.
Rigg: Lachlan Nieboer.
Ethel Bashforth: Emily Spicer.
Director: Phil Wilmott.
Designer: Robin Don.
Lighting: Pete Bragg.
Costume: Penn O’Bara.
Associate designer: Ruth Hall.
2009-04-27 01:30:13