DREAMS OF VIOLENCE To 7 November.
London.
DREAMS OF VIOLENCE
by Stella Feehily.
Soho Theatre 21 Dean Street W1D 3ND to 8 August
then tour to 7 November 2009.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu & Sat 3pm.
Audio-described/BSL Signed 29 July.
Captioned 30 July.
1hr 30min No interval.
TICKETS 020 7478 0100.
www.sohotheatre.com
Review: Carole Woddis 18 July.
Striking some sort of blow for the active mum.
Who would be a mother? And who would be an activist mother, daring to act on deeply held principles and convictions? There were many, through the 1970s and ‘80s (and before), who tried to do both. And what do they get? According to Stella Feehily’s Dreams of Violence – and coincidentally, Alexi Kaye Campbell’s Apologia, recently at the Bush - recrimination as `bad’ or `absent’ mothers, especially of sons. Why couldn’t they just have stayed maternal doormats?
Dreams of Violence is the latest from the indefatigable Max Stafford-Clark and his Out of Joint theatre company. After this season at Soho, it goes out on tour. As such, Max and Out of Joint are to be applauded, helping keep the idea of regional touring alive and kicking.
I wish the same could be said for Stella Feehily’s third play for the company. In characteristic Stafford-Clark fashion, it gets a sharp, spare and speedy production. It’s also topical and political – the banking collapse and greed are two of its central themes – and like Simon Stephens’ Harper Regan last year it charts the familial pressures on a mother with audacious even-handedness.
Catherine Russell’s Hildy is no saint. But she’s surrounded by dementing or demented relatives - Nigel Cooke’s philandering husband, Ben, Paula Wilcox’s alcoholic former pop-star mother, Shirley, living on dreams of the past and Ciaran McIntyre’s changeable, perhaps at one time violent, papa, Jack. Then there’s her one-time heroin-addicted son, Jamie. All at one time or another seem to have harboured dreams of violence towards Hildy or induce dreams of violence in her. Hardly surprising.
The problem is these ideas end up in a rather messy pot-pourri that if entertaining never wholly convinces. 1970s agit-prop - Hildy’s support for low-paid cleaners (themselves presented as no more than cyphers)– sits oddly with the play’s pervading neo-realism. Shirley’s flashback into belting out her old favourites form a pleasing distraction without feeling integral to the play’s main action.
With its ironic `happy ending’, ultimately Dreams of Violence faces in several different directions without being able to decide what it’s really about.
Jamie: Jamie Baughan.
Ben: Nigel Cooke.
Simon/Carl: Giles Cooper.
Bea/Honey: Thusitha Jayasundera.
Jack: Ciaran McIntyre.
Hildy: Catherine Russell.
Annie: Mossie Smith.
Shirley: Paula Wilcox.
Director: Max Stafford-Clark.
Designer: Lucy Osborne.
Lighting: Johanna Town.
Sound: Paul Charlier.
Musical director: Julian Littman.
Choreographer/Associate director: Jessica Swale.
2009-07-21 19:43:05