FRENCH WITHOUT TEARS. To 24 March.

Tour

FRENCH WITHOUT TEARS
by Terence Rattigan

English Touring Theatre Tour to 24 March 2007
Runs 2hr 20min One interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 27 February at Cambridge Arts Theatre

Revival without tears that’s enjoyable within bounds.
There’s a lot of this kind of thing on tour. Plays worth reviving, which can nowadays seem dependable and safe. Productions that look handsome, direction that’s efficient (a positive quality when the smooth-ride lets no-one see how many pitfalls lie along the way), acting that radiates technical skill and engenders audience confidence. Such tours offer nice enough nights out, but nothing to sing about.

This 1936 play is so well-constructed, its characters predictable maybe but neat and sympathetic, it shouldn’t be left overlong on the shelf. And there’s something, as in all good comedy, more serious. Diana Lake, sister to the least-developed of the would-be English diplomatists in France to learn the lingo for career purposes, may be gorgeous in her make-up and 30s-style revealing clothes. But there’s something sad about her perpetual man-trapping. And it reveals something in these young men with their public-school ideas that they should mope and fight over her flickering attentions.

Diana knows attractiveness is her only talent. And it’s time-limited. Catching her man is comic to watch, though there’s no underlying sense of the Shavian life-force; this is no Man and Superman. The seriousness lies in the lonely old-age beckoning if she fails; a place at Rattigan’s Separate Tables.

French Without Tears also holds off happiness for Jacqueline, the intelligent woman who tactfully conceals real affection as assiduously as Diana flaunts the fake variety. This is a comedy, so love triumphs, but only very late. That Bournemouth boarding-house might already be taking bookings.

If only Paul Miller’s capable revival for English Touring Theatre had a spark that ignited something unmissable. Jenna Harrison vamps sweetly as Diana but there’s no urgency to her admission of underlying fear. Nor is there a sense of conflict between Alan Howard’s attempts to have a novel published and the career his father intends for him.

The young men are well-enough played though without the last degree of smooth assurance belonging to their class in that period. What’s left is a satisfying sex comedy, 1930s-style. There are several loud laughs, but the remainder is amusing rather than moving or hilarious.

Kenneth Lake: Ben Carpenter
Brian Curtis: Rupert Young
Hon Alan Howard: Ben Mansfield
Marianne: Leonor Lemee
Monsieur Maingot: Terrence Hardiman
Lt Commander Rogers: Adam James
Diane Lake: Jenna Harrison
Kit Neilan: Hugh Skinner
Jacqueline Maingot: Hannah Yelland

Director: Paul Miller
Designer/Costume: Simon Daw
Lighting: Bruno Poet
Composer: David Shrubsole
Assistant director: Ben Woolf

2007-03-02 07:48:55