ENJOY. To 3 March.
Watford
ENJOY
by Alan Bennett
Palace Theatre To 3 March 2007
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat21 Feb 2.30pm, 24 Feb, 3 March 3pm
Audio-described 3 March 3pm
Captioned 26 Feb
Post-show discussion 20 Feb
Runs 2hr 15min One interval
TICKETS: 01923 225671
www.watfordpalacetheatre.co.uk
review: Timothy Ramsden 13 February
Plenty to enjoy for onlookers, if not in the lives shown onstage.
There’s less to Enjoy than there used to be. Most playwrights fight directors to keep their scripts intact at a new play’s birth. Characteristically, Alan Bennett tried to persuade his director to cut this play in 1980. He was unsuccessful, but Christopher Luscombe’s Watford revival now provides a trimmer play.
Which still leaves plenty to enjoy; from the continuous bickering of long-married old-couple Connie and Wilf in their end-of-terrace back-to-back in industrial Leeds, to the shapeshifting finale, there’s loads of Bennett’s dry wit.
He repeatedly undercuts idealised notions. Connie’s longing to be re-united with her long-departed son is matched by Wilf’s idealisation of their grown-up daughter. Yet both the next generation lead lives different from parental fancies. Bennett covers his attack on golden-age sentimentality under a colourful comic umbrella, throwing in the impact of age and accident, setting the absurdities of the heritage industry and cosy notions of community against skin-deep neighbourliness and youth violence.
Luscombe’s production is the first of new artistic director Brigid Larmour’s intendancy. Though he’s a guest director, it’s to be hoped his trust in the script and actors will now be yardsticks for a theatre where, in recent times, design and production manoeuvres have sometimes been tricksily inadequate substitutes.
There are certainly cracking central performances here. John Arthur maps a wide emotional geography within his anger, while Sue Wallace and, later, Carol Macready are ever their own people despite hints of Dora Bryan and Thora Hird respectively in their comic manner.
Macready’s hilarious in such detail as her carefully-timed responses to a men’s magazine (intriguing how ‘Men Only’ and ‘Women’s Own’ conjure different images): first hide it, then allow surprised reaction. And Wallace sustains a bright-mannered resilience in all situations. Around them there’s good work from Howard Gossington’s long-silent, long-lost son and Josie Walker as the daughter who ignores parental fantasies about her success and knows exactly what she is.
And, with the leakages Bennett’s provided about his life since 1980, it’s fitting the final words here should be the son’s expression of freedom at last as his parents become a part of theme-park history.
Wilfred Craven: John Arthur
Connie Craven: Sue Wallace
Ms Craig: Howard Gossington
Linda Craven: Josie Walker
Heritage: Mark Killeen
Anthony: Adam Lake
Gregory: Chris Edgerley
Mrs Clegg: Carol Macready
Adrian: Steven Alexander
Sid: Nick von Schlippe
Harman: James Hogg
Charles: Dale Carpenter
Rowland: Tom Bickley
Director: Christopher Luscombe
Designer: Janet Bird
Lighting: Colin Grenfell
Sound: Jason Barnes
Music arranger: Michael Haslam
Choreographer: Jenny Arnold
Fight director: Malcolm Ranson
2007-02-15 09:54:13