DIMETOS. To 28 June.
London
DIMETOS
by Athol Fugard
Gate Theatre To 28 June 2003
Mon-Sat 7.30pm
Runs 2hr 35min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7229 0706
boxoffice@gatetheatre.freeserve.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 16 June
Revival of an awkward script rightly plays up the earthbound realities.Fortunate Shereen Patrice. She leaves Acting School for a first professional job at the high-profile Gate. And in the first production for which that theatre's offered money as well as profile. 'ending twenty-four years of actors working for expenses and a sandwich only' as the programme says.
Patrice gives at least as good as she gets, with an intense performance that expresses a packed humanity. And a startling technical display of 'horizontal falling' in the exciting opening to Ben Ormerod's production - much helped by Ti Green's long pit of a stage. If her vocal range - which is well enough for most of the time here - develops (unlike so many actors') she will be a person to watch.
Dimetos' niece comes nearest to a fully-realised character. For despite Fugard's note (quoted, again , from the Gate programme) that 'theatre uses flesh and blood, sweat, the human voice, real pain, real time' this 1976 play breathes only writer's concept. It's not the abstraction visionary engineer has abandoned city life for remote country, then the lonely sea's edge.
It's the schematic tragic hero. Everyone worships Dimetos. And says so, to his and in our face. What sort of person goes on letting the hero-worshipping abound? It's more embarrassing to behold than the sycophancy now so improbable John Osborne's women display towards Jimmy Porter.
By the time his flaw's revealed it's obvious something must be up with this frequently-proclaimed paragon - and the adulation's already been fatal to the drama. The shorter second act is still hemmed in by the symbolism: the horse rescued from a pit by Lydia bound to and following the instructions of Dimetos, naturally trots back into the script with lumbering symbolism.
No reason a playwright shouldn't venture beyond their usual territory. And let's not forget the right to fail. Ben Ormerod's production rightly plays in human-scale emotion, beating in old memory recollections of the British premiere which enlarged the problems by going for grand tragedy. Trevor Sellers gives Dimetos a reserved charisma, making his voyeuristic observation of the assault upon his niece both a shock to the image we have of him and yet one plausibly within the character.
As Dimetos' long-time partner, Laura Cox has the resignation of someone living in a radiance's shadow. And Patrice, from the first horse-rescue 'descent' to the end, successfully develops as the play's alternative moral centre.
Lydia: Shereen Patrice
Dimetos: Trevor Sellers
Sophia: Laura Cox
Danilo: Rhydian Jones
Director: Ben Ormerod
Designer: Ti Green
Lighting: Mark Truebridge
Composer: Corin Buckeridge
Fight director: Alison de Burgh
2003-06-22 23:59:33