EMPTY BED BLUES: Lowe, Lakeside Arts Centre till 21 March

Nottingham.

EMPTY BED BLUES
by Stephen Lowe.

Lakeside Arts Centre To 21 March 2009.
Mon-Sat 8pm, Mat 14, 19 March 2pm.
Audio Described 19 March 8pm (+ Touch Tour 7.15pm).
BSL Signed 18 March.
Runs 2hr 20min One interval.

TICKETS: 0115 846 7777
www.lakesidearts.org.uk.
Review: Alan Geary: 10 March 2009.

It’s not just about full nudity. This is rich and rewarding at many levels, a visual delight.
D H Lawrence is a massively over-rated writer. Most of his ideas are not just wrong: they’re a rag-bag of ill thought-out prejudices that don’t stand critical scrutiny. And his prose is often dreadful. In Stephen Lowe’s latest play Lawrence strides about the stage preaching at us exactly as he writes.

But don’t allow any of this to put you off. The play is rich and rewarding at many levels; and in production terms it’s a visual delight, stunningly well acted by everyone.

Lowe bases his action on real-life diaries. DHL and his wife Frieda are visiting Harry and Caresse Crosby, a couple of wealthy American aesthetes; they want Harry, a publisher, to put up the money for Lady Chatterley. Lawrence, racked with tuberculosis, has only months to live.

Sex is the over-arching theme, of course, but the play is interwoven with discussion of class, cultural values and religion. It’s also paradoxical, both textually and in terms of character; and it’s funny and tragic.

Tim Dantay is outstanding as Lawrence. He captures the repression, the social awkwardness and the chip on the shoulder remarkably well. And so is Clare Calbraith as Caresse, who despite her ridiculously open relationship with Harry, is as in need of authentic love as the rest of us.

Marion Bailey, who bears a striking resemblance to the real Frieda Lawrence, never lets us forget Frieda’s infidelity to her first husband and her children, and Tristan Tait (Harry) achieves the Anglo accent of the New England aristocrat splendidly.

There's an ingenious set: woodland, cottage interior then woodland again, with a real pool of water from which Harry makes his entrance stark naked in the first few seconds. Frieda also takes a dip later on, and so does Caresse. It’s symbolically significant that Lawrence is the only one who doesn’t.

Directed by Matt Aston, this is another fine in-house production from Lakeside Arts Centre in collaboration with the Lincoln Centre for the Performing Arts.

Frieda Lawrence: Marion Bailey.
Caresse Crosby: Clare Calbraith.
D H Lawrence: Tim Dantay.
Harry Crosby: Tristan Tait.

Director: Matt Aston.
Designer: Mark Walters.
Lighting: Ciaran Bagnall.
Sound: Drew Baumohl.

2009-03-12 00:38:06