FRANKE AND JOHNNY IN THE CLAIR DE LUNE. To 20 November.

Bolton

FRANKIE AND JOHNNY IN THE CLAIR DE LUNE
by Terrence McNally

Octagon Theatre To 20 November 2004
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 13,17 Nov 2pm
Runs 2hr One interval

TICKETS: 01204 520661
www.octagontheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 6 November

Warm-hearted, even feelgood, but serving up recognisable feelings from the small, dark hours lit by moonlight in a first-class production.After a fair bash at Twelfth Night Octagon Artistic Director Mark Babych comes up trumps with Terrence McNally's romantic drama of ordinary souls searching for affection under a New York moon. This is no rapid-reaction passion. Approaching midlife, Frankie and Johnny have been waitress and cook in the same diner some time before they've tried making it through the night back at her place.

It's not a pad she likes, and designer Hannah Clark shows why. Cosy and orderly, it's also claustrophobically small and functional, expressing both Frankie's personality and her insignificance in the big order of things.

Though McNally is writing boulevard (or Broadway) drama, never straying into psychological depths, he creates recognisable, sympathetic people who don't have to be drop-dead gorgeous, outlandishly witty or flex a meat-cleaver to be interesting. If McNally isn't Shakespeare, neither were most Elizabethan playwrights; there's room for the ordinary when it's done with this down-to-earth honesty.

McNally's far from simplistic; our evening (and their night) opens with forthright bonking, the Octagon providing a forte bedspring mazurka. What follows is better than sex; a voyage towards tentative understanding. The title emphasises the fragility of their existence - though the title refers to two musical pieces, the radio announcer Johnny rings assumes he's giving pseudonyms while neither character discovers the beautiful music to which they watch the moonlight is Debussy's Clair de Lune.

McNally does manipulate things to tighten tension or spread emotion. If that's more obviously in Caroline Harding's Frankie, it's because she's the character hosting the emotional journey. Chris Gascoyne's Johnny is more reactive, his attempts at initiative more unrealistic like a marriage proposal before dawn.

Both find plenty in the characters. While a metropolitan production might offer more starry personalities, there's a distinct gain in these first-rate character performances, aptly making the pair significant rather than exceptional. Gascoyne ensures his character's limited vocal manner never becomes tedious, offering energy and a genuine, if rough-cut desire to please, while Harding shows Frankie as a warm if cautious personality struggling with awareness of life's toughness and complexity in the Octagon's treat of a production.

Johnny: Chris Gascoyne
Frankie: Caroline Harding
Radio Announcer: Matthew Rixon

Director: Mark Babych
Designer: Hannah Clark
Lighting: Thomas Weir
Sound: Andy Smith
Voice/dialect coach: Majella Hurley

2004-11-08 23:04:18