FOUR NIGHTS IN KNARESBROUGH. To 8 March.
Leeds
FOUR NIGHTS IN KNARESBROUGH
by Paul Webb
West Yorkshire Playhouse (Courtyard Theatre) To 8 March 2003
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Thu & Sat 2.30pm
Audio-described 2.30pm 27 February 7.45pm 1&4 March
Runs 2hr 35min One interval
TICKETS: 0113 213 7700
www.wyp.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 20 February
Good fun in murderous medieval times, but it's a play that takes a long time to start going anywhere.In a sense, the point of Paul Webb's punnily-titled play is summarised in its opening and closing moments. First, caught startlingly in shafts of light Henry II's four knights declare loudly for their monarch. In the snap-witted curtain line the youngest and most declasse of the quartet - all dispatched to the Pope for judgment - sardonically says they'd better not murder the old bugger.
Not too strange, as they spend the play holed up in Knaresbrough Castle, North Yorkshire (under an hour's travel from the West Yorkshire Playhouse, latest resting-place of a piece first seen at London's Tricycle Theatre in 1999, then on tour), having killed the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas a Beckett.
Local resentment seethes, keeping them holed up in a kind of bloody-buddy action, where nerves and relationships grow increasingly raw. And royal support is ambiguous, at best. The issue was live enough when loyalties could be defined as much by religion as by a nationality more fluid than we're nowadays used to. As Earl Norman de Tebbitte put it, ' It is a question of whether a man batteth for his religione or his natione, for his monarche or for ye Pope'.
Webb is certainly witty and has an expert way with dialogue. It crackles along, creating distinctive characters, even justifying the anomalous role of Catherine, apparently a servant really a rich landowner - hence, presumably, her assertive, if taciturn, way.
But the play seems to have its priorities in reverse proportions. There's plenty of bickering, hero-worship and homophobic hatred - young Brito, the Glasgow yob, its convenient catalyst. There's constipation, problems of bladder-control (no minor matter when four of you share a tin bath), and aggression.
This could have made for an earthy background to the issues inherent in the history and the situation. But for act one, and half of act two, it's all there is. In their medieval Huis Clos hell is other Sirs and - underdeveloped - indecision on high as you helplessly await your future being determined.
It's only when the knights put on a show of repentence, selling themselves as a local tourist attraction every Wednesday, that the drama moves on. Knightly insolence finds its villeinous match in local citizen John, happily recounting the list of disliked relatives a couple of the knights rid him of in their slaughterous nocturnal sortie. His intervention seems to spur Webb on to sort out the central characters' future: if only this had been developed more, earlier.
Hayden Griffin's set emphasises the characters' isolation without going overly medieval on us. Gemma Bodinetz' varyingly acted production (performances tend to look suave but sound stiff, occasionally mis-accented) is well-paced for the play's comedy.
Becket/Wigmore/John: Paul M. Meston
Traci: Dominic Mafham
Morville: Daniel Flynn
Fitz: Terence Beesley
Brito: Steven Duffy
Catherine: Esther Hall
Director: Gemma Bodinetz
Designer: Hayden Griffin
Lighting: Paul Russell
Sound: Mic Pool
Composer: Conor Lineham
Fight director: John Waller
2003-02-23 15:08:53