ENGLISH JOURNEYS. To 25 August.

Edinburgh - Fringe

ENGLISH JOURNEYS
by Steve Waters

Weaver Hughes Ensemble at Pleasance Cavern To 25 August 2003
Wed-Mon 4.20pm
Runs 1hr 20min No interval

TICKETS: 0131 556 6550
Review: Timothy Ramsden 4 August

Smart, well-acted production of a play that's confined by its overall concept.An earlier version of this play was premiered at Hampstead Theatre a few years ago. It received something of a critical drubbing in several quarters, but Waters' recent World Music at Sheffield Crucible both gives an international context for this parochially-titled piece and makes another look at the earlier work timely.

Though it still has problems, the revisions and a new production may well have mended some of the matter. The main difficulty is that, within the concept of examining class and relationships in terms of drives along some of England's arterial routes, Waters has a concept that's more original than the characters and their stories.

Bored middle-class marriage, with flashbacks to enthusiastically happy early days, and the violence looming when Graham Elwell's polite civil servant, separated from barrister wife Kathy, gives a lift to emotionally volatile, mini-skirted Jo (can he have been so naive?) are well-trodden paths where Waters clears nothing new.

The trunk routes we take with his characters may lead to some of the country's leading tourist spots, but they only drive these people back to family and personal responsibilities and complexities. It's a nice, if hardly revelatory, irony.

Ben Treacher's production, on a littered stage where only a steering-wheel sticks out, is moodily lit by Stuart Brindle. All three actors do well, creating clear characters and making them matter. It may be Waters' own milieu or his deliberate comment on how the money and power's distributed, that Melissa D'Arcy's passenger shouts loudest but has least speaking time.

Kathy: Julia Stubbs
Peter: Graham Elwell
Jo: Melissa D'Arcy

Director: Ben Treacher
Designer: Jens Demant Cole
Lighting: Stuart Brindle
Sound: Quinn Gardener

2003-08-05 21:46:01