FORGET-ME-NOT LANE. To 25 August.
Scarborough
FORGET-ME-NOT LANE
by Peter Nichols
Stephen Joseph Theatre In rep to 25 August 2007
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 2.30pm
Ruins 2hr 25min One interval
TICKETS: 01723 370541
www.sjt.uk.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 18 August
Acerbic trip down memory lane.
Few theatres seem to know or care playwright Peter Nichols is 80 this year. Manchester’ Library revived his remarkably-constructed A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1967) last year, and now the Stephen Joseph mounts this 1971 play.
One of Nichols’ several thinly-veiled autobiographical dramas, it visualises moments from wartime and after in the life of dramatist's alter-ego Frank. In the play’s present-day he’s veering into middle-age and packing to leave wife Ursula and their children.
Ben Fox brings the narrator Frank a candid acceptance of events that suits the character’s name. Then there’s the father whose linguistic pedantry can be refreshing (young Frank doesn’t “Need his hair cutting badly”, but “Badly needs his hair cutting well”) or woefully pointless. Nichols shows skill in structuring his memory-narrative, gradually delving beneath Charles’ apparent self-command to show a growing child’s awareness of parental weakness. Mike Burnside gives him an apt mix of command and clumsiness of manner.
Elaine Claxton’s mother, a chain-smoking music teacher reduced to grumbling at dad behind his back, is reflected in Sarah Moyle’s adult version of Frank’s wife. Her sole moment of happiness comes as she returns from teaching her Art evening-class, but she’s soon enmeshed in quarrels. As she and Frank’s Mum talk, he indulges in sexual slave-girls fantasies.
Bob Eaton’s production might have made more of the swirl of memory, including a roller-skating forties pin-up girl (still recalled in lustful middle-age), and a sexually predatory gay magician. Frank’s youthful transformation by the new cultural awareness the army has brought, is over-obviously played, while Ben Lambert seems too suavely smooth as the friend whose rough-edges are now apparent to Frank.
And for once Pip Leckenby’s design seems unhelpful, with its little-used raised-stage limiting the action, while the 40s-poster images on the floor working against the play’s fluid structure.
But the final moment, as Frank turns from domestic troubles and turns to look from Moyle’s fretting Ursula to Katie Foster-Barnes, splendidly fresh in all senses as her younger self, and decides it’s all been worthwhile resolves this play’s ingredients in a mood of surprisingly hopeful assertion.
Frank: Ben Fox
Young Frank: Dominic Hecht
Ursula: Sarah Moyle
Young Urse: Katie Foster-Barnes
Charles: Mike Burnside
Amy: Elaine Claxton
Ivor: Ben Lambert
Miss 1940: Ruth Gibson
Mr Magic: Timothy Kightley
Director: Bob Eaton
Designer: Pip Leckenby
Lighting: Jo Dawson
2007-08-19 14:43:12