HARPER REGAN. To 9 August.
London.
HARPER REGAN
by Simon Stephens.
Cottesloe Theatre In rep to 9 August 2008.
Thu-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 2.30pm
Runs 2hr 30min One interval.
TICKETS: 020 7452 3000.
www.nationaltheatre.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 5 August.
Play, production and performer magnificently catch the central character’s sense of disorientation.
This is not just another midlife-crisis play. Harper, who ups and offs, is a 41-year old wife, mother and breadwinner. Her husband Seth can’t get a job, yet dresses in a suit (though Harper and college daughter Sarah tell him he looks better in jeans) and retains an optimistic middle-class outlook.
When her London boss refuses permission to visit her dying father in Manchester Harper suddenly finds herself outside the flow of her life, looking perplexedly in. As Hildegard Bechtler’s set revolves, or one unit slides-in to replace another, the world seems topsy-turvy while Harper looks on.
Her boss is seriously weird; but this is a world where the seriously weird wear suits and hold power. In Stockport and Manchester she meets a nurse and a journalist, both containing the seeds of mania as they carry out their jobs. They’re seen only once, though Harper acquires the journalist’s leather-jacket, a new skin for her changing sense of herself.
New desires come too; for a student from her daughter’s college in Uxbridge (Harper’s not quite moved to London; hers is all-ways a life on the edge); for a brief encounter in a Manchester hotel room, where the split-level design intrigues her. Senses register strongly with the dislocated Harper: human odour, tastes, the ever-presence of sounds are newly perceived amid her disorientation.
At her remarried mother’s neat suburban home, a new slant on life disturbs Harper. Back in Uxbridge she has trouble with Sarah, whose fact-crammed knowledge of icebergs, designed to get her through exams, has none of the slow-acquired experience her mother’s gaining.
This play doesn’t sidle up to audiences with easy humour or sympathy. Eventually, though, it grips firmly, its distanced manner key to its matter. Only the final resolution, breakfast in a sunlit garden, seems too easy.
Marianne Elliott directs with the authority of someone knowing Manchester and London, while amid the fine cast Jessica Raine captures precisely a self-confident, disdainful teenager. Lesley Sharp is magnificent as Harper, conveying in her speech and reserve the sense of someone surprised at finding life strange and her own position needing redefinition.
Harper Regan: Lesley Sharp.
Elwood Barnes: Michael Mears.
Tobias Rich: Troy Glasgow.
Seth Regan: Nick Sidi.
Sarah Regan: Jessica Raine,
Justine Ross: Jessica Harris,
Mickey Nestor: Jack Deam.
James Fortune: Brian Capron.
Alison Woolley: Susan Brown.
Duncan Woolley: Eamon Boland.
Mahesh Aslam: Nitin Kundra.
Director: Marianne Elliott.
Designer: Hildegard Bechtler.
Lighting: Chris Davey.
Sound: Ian Dickinson.
Company voice work: Jeannette Nelson.
Fight director: Alison de Burgh.
2008-08-07 11:13:52