HABEAS CORPUS. To 15 March.
Colchester.
HABEAS CORPUS
by Alan Bennett.
Mercury Theatre To 15 March 2008.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 8, 15 March 2.30pm.
Audio-described 15 March 2.30pm
Runs 2hr 10min One interval.
TICKETS: 01206 573948.
www.mercurytheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 7 March.
Wicksteed’s wicked deeds carry some comic conviction in Colchester.
Alan Bennett’s 1973 play mixes the farce of Joe Orton with the melancholy of John Betjeman. And Dorothy L Sayers translated the Latin title as Have His Carcase, the legal ruling that requires a corpse to prove a murder. Bennett suggests having a body is murderous enough when you’re alive, with its urges motivating much human behaviour.
Dr Arthur Wicksteed speaks a jeremiad against the human body, then denies it all as he sets eyes on delicious young Felicity Rumpers. Disgust with the physical form recurs throughout, as the sex drive motors the segments of farcical action through which Bennett weaves his commentary. Pregnancy and disease march alongside desire and disgust as the bright colours of a seaside postcard (it’s set in Brighton) provide a comic sheen to Bennett’s disenchanted evening.
Janice Dunn’s revival is amusing and fitfully hilarious, without achieving the consistent delirium of Ian Forrest’s 2001 Keswick production. Dunn doesn’t let the farce fly, interrupting it with distracting directorial devices. A couple of choreographed interludes work beautifully, but elsewhere the editorialising slows matters down, as does the coy and awkward device of an X-ray screen behind the action, where characters are seen disrobing in discreet silhouette.
A couple of modern parallels don’t help. The play exudes an early-70s air of middle-class defeatism, though the most overt line, about militant infiltration of a cake-decorating group, raised no audience response.
Yet Miranda Bell makes clear, without any direct reference, why Margaret Thatcher would soon be attracting support among those for whom “the permissive society” (here given an unhistorical emphasis on the adjective) was unfamiliar, slightly exciting but frightening.
A few performances display little sense of comic pitch or timing, but Colchester scores in several others, including Roger Delves-Broughton’s Wicksteed, suavely lusting (though his one-line interjections are burdened with an inappropriate Groucho Marxism), and Christine Absalom as his wife, formidably respectable until her frustrated sexual stasis is shattered.
And newcomer to the Mercury’s ensemble Eleanor Montgomery, playing the maiden aunt who refuses to accept spinsterhood as she ages, superbly combines comedy with the sense of a life of quiet desperation beneath.
Arthur Wicksteed: Roger Delves-Broughton.
Muriel Wicksteed: Christine Absalom.
Dennis Wicksteed: Michael Thomson.
Constance Wicksteed: Eleanor Montgomery.
Mrs Swabb: Romy Baskerville.
Canon Throbbing: Ben Livingstone.
Lady Rumpers: Miranda Bell.
Felicity Rumpers: Clare Humphrey.
Mr Shanks: Tim Freeman.
Sir Percy Shorter: Dale Superville.
Mr Purdue: Stephen Lorne Williams.
Director: Janice Dunn.
Designer: Sally Howard.
Lighting: Helen Morley.
Sound: Marcus Christensen.
2008-03-09 13:31:28