DROWNING ON DRY LAND. To 11 September, then tour.
Scarborough/Tour
DROWNING ON DRY LAND
by Alan Ayckbourn
Stephen Joseph Theatre (The Round) In rep to 26 June, then 10-11 September 2004 and autumn 2004 tour
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 2.30pm
Audio-described 11 September 2.30pm
BSL Signed 10 September
Runs 2hr 30min One interval
TICKETS: 01723 370541 (Scarborough)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 29 May
The themes are present and correct; the play they're in could do with some sprucing up.Alan Ayckbourn's plays have proceeded from observation of middle-class England through social comment to sceptical fascination with technology. Now he looks at another aspect of the techno-age: obsession with empty celebrity.
Charlie Conrad's wife Linzi was a well-known children's TV presenter, but she's totally eclipsed by Charlie's superstardom as Britain's most famous failure. This brings wealth, and, from the other end of the entertainment spectrum, children's entertainer Marsha Bates (Sarah Moyle, aptly dunderheaded, alike as fan and under cross-examination), who ends up suing him.
Fame, Milton's last infirmity of noble mind, has since gone downhill. An early Chekhov story describes a young man madly excited at being in the newspaper, it emerges for a minor conviction. Chekhov makes the point in barely one page. Ayckbourn takes over 2 hours to say not much more.
Which might not matter if story and characters were more credible. Melanie Gutteridge joins the line of fine young performers Ayckbourn has discovered for Scarborough, but the opening scene's vacuously vague Linzi doesn't match her later good sense. Nor does the gap pass as the result of another Ayckbourn stage wife having her personality ground down by an inconsiderate husband.
Though Stephen Beckett does a good job as cheerful Charlie, the character remains a vacuum, while the attempt to provide an optimistic ending fails. Charlie's supposed to find the disputed way to the top of a Folly in the grounds of his house. This Folly's dark interior forms an Escher-like conundrum, steps seeming to lead upwards yet ending on the level they began. It's implausible, non-organic to the action (though all too clearly relevant to the theme) and David Newton's music the kind of upbeat chordal resolution that's become a regular way to end Ayckbourn acts at the Stephen Joseph can't disguise the false relation.
What's left are incidental pleasures, notably the combat of celeb. and second-rate lawyers - amoral brilliance winning hands down. But Ayckbourn's concerns seem one draft short of a convincing play.
Charlie Conrad: Stephen Beckett
Linzi Ellison: Melanie Gutteridge
Jason Ratcliffe: Adrian McLoughlin
Hugo de Prescourt: Stuart Fox
Gale Gilchrist: Billie-Claire Wright
Marsha Bates: Sarah Moyle
Simeon Diggs: Paul Kemp
Laura: Sophie Irving/Harriet Richie
Katie: Alice Kynman/Rosalind Pilgrim
Director: Alan Ayckbourn
Designer: Roger Glossop
Lighting: Mick Hughes
Music: David Newton
Costume: Christine Wall
2004-06-21 08:42:23