FUNNY MONEY. To 24 August.
Aldeburgh
FUNNY MONEY
by Ray Cooney
Jubilee Hall, Aldeburgh To 24 August 2002
Mon-Sat 8.15pm Mat Sat 5pm
Runs 2hr One interval
TICKETS 01728 453007 (11am-4pm) 01728 454022 (6-8.30pm/Sat 4-8.30pm)
Review Timothy Ramsden 15 August at St Edmund's Hall, Southwold
Finely detailed performances and high-heat pacing serve this farce well
What's the difference between Joe Orton or Dario Fo provoking us to laugh a the church or police, and Ray Cooney making fun out of suspected homosexual shenanigans - or the police?
It's that Orton and Fo do provoke, taking comic stands and inviting us to share their critical perspective. While Cooney plays upon our expected reactions without asking us to reconsider or examine them.
He does it with great craft in this 1995 farce, managing, for instance, to create a series of natural-seeming incidents where two or more characters hide under a blanket, apparently jiggling with secret pleasure, while actually trying to conceal a case containing a lot of ill, or accidentally, gotten money.
But along with the skilfully contrived laughs, we're asked to find it righteously shaming that two men or women should be considered in some form of same-sex delicto.
With Cooney, the name Perkins seems a signal these are clodhoppingly commonplace people: meaning, of course, white, middle-class, heterosexual and with a relationship where a woman's role is to go along with, or protest against, male decisions but never to make the running herself.
Even the one thing Cooney shares with Orton and Fo - police corruption- is not discussed, merely dropped in as part of the merry-go-round.
Jill Freud's acting company take to this as ducks to the duckpond, swimming around with matured ease from the moment Rebekah Janes' harrassed Jean dances across the stage, mixing bowl in hand, thinking she's going to have friends round for her husband's birthday, only to find her Henry wants her off on the 9.15 flight to Barcelona with the bag of cash he's acquired. Janes is excellent, even surviving with dignity the cliched drunk scene Cooney imposes on the character.
There's strong work all-round, including Jeffrey Perry's smiling Henry, though the production might chart his eventually collapsing confidence slightly more sharply as the lies and different stories multiply.
Nicola Delaney reveals what lies behind Betty's well-tended glamour when she immediately volunteers to flee with Henry. As, eventually, does just about everyone else, including Gerry Hinks' bent copper: Hinks beaming detective, out for what he can get from the start, is a farcical delight.
Even Gary Bates' cabman, forever being sent to wait outside, comes up trumps at last with his own contribution to the denouement.
Fine, at times outstanding, company work then in a mechanically perfect piece. It's just that I'm not sure I like being thought of as the person Mr Cooney seems to assume I must be to enjoy his script.
Jean Perkins: Rebekah Janes
Henry Perkins: Jeffrey Perry
Bill: Gary Bates
Davenport: Gerry Hinks
Slater: Matthew Storey
Betty Johnson: Nicola Delaney
Vic Johnson: Clive Flint
Passer-by: Anthony Falkingham
Director: Richard Frost
Designer: Maurice Rubens
Lighting: Matthew Wasbrough
Costume: Richard Handscombe
2002-08-18 12:26:58