CYPRUS. To 17 December.

London

CYPRUS
by Peter Arnott

Trafalgar Studios (Studio2) To 17 December 2005
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Thu & Sat 3pm
Runs 2hr 10min One interval

TICKETS: 0870 060 6632 (booking fee)
www.theambassadors.com/trafalgarstudios
Review: Timothy Ramsden 29 November
Never forget that important constituency of theatre: the audience. And their environment. It’s easy to be patronising, but Peter Arnott’s spy-drama might well have been at home on Mull, the west coast Scottish isle where the Little Theatre (38 seats but set to transfer a new, larger venue) has played summer seasons from the 1960s, recently developing into a touring operation, and now bringing this piece south.

On a summer eve near Tobermory, for a holiday audience, or some of the 3,000 Mull residents for whom mainland theatre means a stay away from home, Arnott’s conspiracy story of secret-service types in putative retirement might have just the right gentle tension. And after his bold sex-trade play The Breathing House at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum, Arnott may have written something tailored for an audience expected to be slower in apprehension, and more easily impressed by motivational sleight-of-hand.

Set in the comfortable living-room of retired master-spook Traquair, somewhere on a Scottish island, the play shows a visit by his protégé Griffen. How the pair recently re-met, accidentally on purpose, and the truth about Griffen’s relation with Traquair’s daughter Alison, gradually emerge. Both have serious consequences in this double-bluff meets triple story. If only Traquair hadn’t gone to London.

If only the play, too, had stayed at home. In London’s multi-choice theatrical variety, Arnott’s plot is shown up as talk resulting usually in more talk; talk that’s too often desultory. The political skulduggery may refer to Afghanistan, Iraq and other big stories but seen in a theatre on London’s number one political highway, what’s said about them rarely suggests more than the awareness easily picked up from The Guardian or, say, The Scotsman. The tame sexual plotting is predictable and even a suddenly-produced firearm hardly raises the temperature.

What’s left is a fine picture of relaxed authority from Sandy Neilson’s Traquair. If his occasional eruptions seem edged with self-consciousness, that’s the script’s responsibility; Neilson handles them surely, showing the control under the gently smiling manner. Mull supremo Alasdair McCrone and, particularly, Beth Marshall work conscientiously on their genre characters under Arnott’s own too-relaxed direction.

Alison: Beth Marshall
Griffen: Alasdair McCrone
Traquair: Sandy Neilson

Director: Peter Arnott
Designer: Robin Peoples
Sound/Music: Martin Low

2005-12-01 17:10:31