HAUNTED To 13 June.
Manchester.
HAUNTED
by Edna O’Brien.
Royal Exchange Theatre To 13 June 2009.
Mon-Fri 7.30pm Sat 8pm mat Wed 2.30pm & Sat 4pm.
Audio-described 6 June 4pm (+ Touch Tour).
BSL Signed 13 June 4pm.
Post-show discussion 11 June.
Runs 2hr 20min One interval.
TICKETS: 0161 833 9833.
www.royalexchange.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 21 May.
Haunting new play in fine production.
In one week the British stage sees two magnificent plays in equally magnificent productions. Different as they are, the Almeida’s British premiere of Andrew Bovell’s When the Rain Stops Falling and the Royal Exchange world premiere of Edna O’Brien’s Haunted are rooted in family relations. Bovell’s extend across generations and are based on partial knowledge. O’Brien focuses on a marriage and the sense of loss lives lived together can create.
Gladys Berry is the practical one, working while her husband of many years sits at home thinking about getting a job. Or, thinks about anything but. Brenda Blethyn clops around, mixing practical assertion and underlying disappointment, making her way through the transparent front door, till she finds it locked against her. Jack stays inside, where the floor-panels of Simon Higlett’s set radiate from miniscule by the door to a grand width deep in the home.
Roses colour these boards as young Hazel arrives, a latter-day waif, eking her life on a market-stall, doing some voice-teaching and hired for this by poetic Jack as he finds first-name intimacy (admittedly using a pseudonym) outside a marriage where it’s become Mr and Mrs Berry to each other throughout
Both suburban dreamer and elderly idler, he is something of a suburban Peer Gynt. And Niall Buggy wondrously incorporates base metal and gold, mundane liar and imaginative hero in a way recalling that famous mid-century Gynt, Ralph Richardson.
Beth Cooke’s Hazel, first seen as a vision circling the others on a revolving rim, is near the edge mentally, as are the others in their various ways. Her childlike joy at a seaside funfair, her aptness as the crazed wife from O’ Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night (she’s acting an extract for a hospice, in Gladys’s wedding-dress, provided by Jack along with most of his wife’s wardrobe), her escape when she finds that Mrs Berry isn’t dead, and generally febrile manner all point to her final destination.
Braham Murray’s exemplary production catches each note, distributing sympathies widely and wisely and never judging for the audience. It’s a haunting experience itself.
Mrs Berry: Brenda Blethyn.
Mr Berry: Niall Buggy.
Hazel: Beth Cooke.
Director: Braham Murray.
Designer: Simon Higlett.
Lighting: Johanna Town.
Sound: Pete Rice.
Composer: Akintayo Akinbode.
Fight director: Renny Krupinski.
2009-05-23 12:27:03