ENDURING FREEDOM. To 30 August.

London.

ENDURING FREEDOM
by Anders Lustgarten.

Finborough Theatre The Finborough Road Brasserie 118 Finborough Road SW10 9ED To 30 August 2008.
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat & Sun 3pm.
Runs 1hr 50min One interval.

TICKETS: 0844 847 1652 (no booking fee).
www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk (reduced full-price tickets online).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 9 August.

Intriguing 9/11 aftermath drama in decent, if constricted production.
Tom McFarlane’s a grief-stricken New York fireman whose son’s just died in the Twin Towers attack. Married to Susan, who supported Al Gore in the previous year’s election, Tom’s a Republican. But a thinking Republican, whose support dates from the party filling the Democrats’ post-Vietnam ideological gap.

So Tom asks questions about government behaviour over 9/11. Like, why, when warned beforehand by their security services, they did nothing. With his questions unacknowledged, let alone answered, Tom ends up disrupting a 9/11 tribute.

Also grief-shocked is the bereft Hanna Schneider, who joins Tom in another protest. She’s a music teacher who’s lost her perfect pitch; he feels George W’s America is no longer his country. As he expresses his disquiet others' easy sympathy falls away. His friend Ray, full of patriotic fury, doesn't understand, Tom’s abused by a right-wing shock-jock when he tries to explain his concerns on-air, and given curtly polite, yet firm, warnings by a congresswoman.

And his marriage comes under strain. The play, beginning with the McFarlanes and Villapianos, from their different ethnic backgrounds, eating together in all-American sociability, ends with wife and husband surveying their uncertain marriage.

Writer Anders Lustgarten explores individual uncertainty in a time when national shock brings about a clamming-together and rejection of dissent. There are dependable performances throughout. In particular, Anna Savva brings force to the friend’s wife and a self-promoting nonentity in the political arena.

If Lisa Eichhorn seems comparatively subdued, it’s fitting, for Susan is the one person able to admit torn feelings, the sole character outside the right-wing enclave, yet caught like a rabbit in the sudden overpowering glare of political reaction. Vincent Riotta charts Tom's doubts, expressed despite reactions.

But Roland Jaquarello’s Finborough production for his Giant Steps theatre company tends to lumber along efficiently rather than building a sense of development. And while the set, based on a monochrome Stars and Stripes with running ‘colours’ (undermining the crowd chant “These colours don’t run”), helpfully splits into the various necessary furniture, scene changes can be cumbersome. For once, the Finborough, comfortable home to so many near-epics, seems overcrowded.

Susan McFarlane: Lisa Eichhorn.
Tom McFarlane: Vincent Riotta.
Hanna Schneider/Diane Roberts: Fiz Marcus.
Ray Villapiano/Park Attendant/The Mad Dog: Charlie Roe.
Sophia Villapiano/Linda Brown/Jessica Taylor: Anna Savva.

Director: Roland Jaquarello.
Designer: Vanessa Hawkins.
Lighting: Gabriel Phillips-Sanchez.
Sound: David Sharrock.
Assistant director: Georgina Guy.
Assistant designer: Kimberley Turner.
Assistant lighting: Martin Ellsmore.

2008-08-18 22:01:38