EPITAPH FOR GEORGE DILLON.
London.
EPITAPH FOR GEORGE DILLON
by John Osborne and Anthony Creighton.
Comedy Theatre.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed & Sat 2.30pm.
Runs 2hr 45min One interval.
TICKETS: 0870 060 6637 (£2.50 processing fee per transaction).
0870 534 4444 (24 hr, no booking fee £2.50 service charge per transaction).
0870 264 3333 (booking fee).
www.theambassadors.com/comedy
www.seegeorgedillon.com (Booking fee).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 28 September.
Fine production of a play where language plays out the contest between vigour and the dead hand of conventionality.
A newcomer walks into a family living-room full of routines and private discontents it's a formula employed in widely different ways by others after its use in this 1955 play (first seen in 1958). But the obvious comparison of subject and tone is with John Osborne's 1956 Look Back in Anger, in the verbal blasts from the future of a young man's anger.
By the time high-aspiring, low-achieving actor/playwright George delivers his own epitaph he's subject less to the physical illness signalled by his coughing fits, more to the living-death of absorption by those around, tied down to their deadly lives and minds, a substitute son for Anne Reid's mother, the dead boy whose picture George despises.
Even his play loses out as it wins through, thanks to changes wrought by theatrical producer Barney (Stephen Greif, splendid in his hearty, blinker-visioned assurance) In this lower-middle class world of routine and prejudice, the playwrights voice a contempt for vacuous popular culture equalled only in Arnold Wesker's Roots.
Apart from some over-tricksy between-scenes lighting, Peter Gill's scrupulous production allows the play to speak powerfully, its procession of deadening voices surrounding George and Ruth's magnificent, sustained heart-to-heart. Francesca Annis gives a superbly controlled picture of imaginative discontent as the one mind alive in this semi-detached suburban limbo, moving out as George sinks into the cosy morass.
There are fine ignorance-is-bliss performances, especially Reid's benevolent mother, ever smiling and infuriating with her soft-voiced certainties, while grouchy husband Percy melts into fawning smiles (even setting George's chair for him) when he discovers George's link to his favourite TV personality.
Joseph Fiennes has many skilled moments but sympathy for George too easily slips, emotional pain becoming mere selfishness. And it is a different world; though Alex Dunbar's benefits man, seeing happiness in a regular income and pension prospects, is played with apt blandness, the play muddles the revelation of George's duplicity revealed in his visit. And, these days when pensions are a cause of anxiety for millions, the play's confident mockery becomes tinged with doubt. Still writing like this remains a force to be reckoned with.
Josie Elliot: Zoe Tapper.
Ruth Gray: Francesca Annis.
Mrs Elliot: Anne Reid.
Norah Elliot: Dorothy Atkinson.
Percy Elliot: Geoffrey Hutchings.
George Dillon: Joseph Fiennes.
Geoffrey Colwyn-Stuart: Hugh Simon.
Mr Webb: Alex Dunbar.
Barney Evans: Stephen Greif.
Director: Peter Gill.
Designer: John Gunter.
Lighting: Hugh Vanstone.
Music compiler: David Shrubsole.
Associate costume: Mark Bouman.
Assistant director: Hamish Pirie.
Assistant lighting: James Whiteside.
2005-09-29 13:38:40