HABEAS CORPUS. To 14 June.
Northampton
HABEAS CORPUS
by Alan Bennett
Royal Theatre To June 2003
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 31 May, 5,14 June 2.30pm
Audio-described 3 June
BSL Signed 10 June
Postshow talkback 11 June
Runs 2hr 15min One interval
TICKETS: 01604 624811
www.northamptontheatres.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 27 May 2003
Bouncy outing for Bennett's saucy seaside-postcard period romp, but do we still need this seventies sadness?
Clement Attlee, Ted Heath, Anna Neagle: if these names mean anything, Alan Bennett's probing among the physical disgust of human corporeality might well be something you can relate to.
In the age of Patrick Marber and Mark Ravenhill it seems a strange choice for a young artistic director to give his young associate director in a theatre that's reaching out to young audiences.
Habeas Corpus was terminally middle-aged when it first appeared 30 years ago. It's setting, Hove, is no longer a widespread joke – any more than Tunbridge Wells. Doubtless fine places, any wider resonance they once had has faded.
The play's an historical document with its air of pre-Thatcher English defeatism, redolent of a society looking backwards. The youth race was under way, but not for Bennett – several characters wonderingly refer to the permissive society. While it's helpful to be reminded the Swinging sixties was always a marketing gloss, this play's post-imperial defeatism - cast in the form of a pier-end farce – is strictly not Now.
These affluent bods, and lower middle-class interlopers, once showed desire burgeoning beneath respectability. As Joe Orton made police corruption laughable, so did Bennett with medical impropriety. In the age of Harold Shipman, and struck-off GPs hardly raising the public eyebrow, Bennett's satire is very mild. A pair of false breasts ordered under brown paper wrapping can't hold much of a candle to the age of breast implants. And Shakespeare long ago mused on desire outliving performance.
Simon Godwin's hearty revival is, though, splendidly cast. Especially, Richard Braine's rich and flexibly voiced canoodling MD is a fine centrepiece; Angela Clerkin's outstanding too - alert and detailed as a spinster-in-denial.
A few dead moments will doubtless be erased during the run. But the finest Habeas I know, directed two years ago in Keswick by Ian Forrest, had a pace and ensemble playing that aren't quite here. Entrances need to be brisker, the action to flow, not separate into set-pieces.
It remains enjoyable enough for those who find the play still has something to say, but as a farce it needs a higher pitch.
Arthur Wicksteed: Richard Braine
Muriel Wicksteed: Anita Carey
Dennis Wicksteed: Freddie Stevenson
Constance Wicksteed: Angela Clerkin
Mrs Swabb: Di Botcher
Canon Throbbing: Paul Rogan
Lady Rumpers: Marty Cruikshank
Felicity Rumpers: Charlotte Lucas
Mr Shanks/Mr Purdue: Tony Timberlake
Sir Percy Shorter: Jonathan Coyne
Director: Simon Godwin
Designer: Simon Daw
Lighting: Paul Dennant
Sound: Adrienne Quartly
Choreographer: Rachel Jeffery
Assistant director: David Moore
2003-05-27 23:41:14