HEARTBREAK HOUSE. To 14 April.
Watford
HEARTBREAK HOUSE
by George Bernard Shaw
Palace Theatre To 14 April 2007
Mon-sat 7.45pm Mat 4, 11 April 2.30pm & 31 March, 14 April 3pm no performance 6, 9 April
Audio-described 14 April 3pm
Captioned 12 April
Post-show discussion 3 April
Runs 2hr 50min One interval
TICKETS: 01923 225671
www.watfordpalacetheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 26 March
The ship of state rolling on the South Downs.
Who are some of these offstage people? What is the role of playwright Sam Adamson as “Textual Adviser” on this production? Where was Jack Murphy’s movement work visible? And could theatre voice doyenne Patsy Rodenburg really have been behind the roaring to which Indhu Rubasingham’s production too frequently resorts?
So, is it worth seeing, Watford’s revival of Bernard Shaw’s Fantasia on Russian Themes, his depiction of affluent, leisured British society leading up to the First World War, in what he imagined was a Chekhovian manner? It’s a long, weighty play by his standards and so not often seen. That alone makes it worth consideration. And there’s an impressive cast-list even if many members perform slightly below their best.
That’s because Rubasingham has allowed a certain self-conscious actorism. It’s there in Martin Turner’s first twitches as the industrial magnate who relies on others’ money. Or in the shaping of some sentences by David Killick as the idealist Dunn (named after an Italian freedom-fighter) who Mangan’s exploited with seeming kindness. In other performances too.
It appears part of the director’s attempt to make this mighty monster (which Shaw with his casual-seeming importance says he held back while the war was being fought because his message would have sapped morale) as audience-friendly as possible. Howard Ward’s Randall has a moment’s intellectual anger turned into a farcical stomp. Suzan Sylvester’s Hesione behaves like a witty character out of Wilde.
What’s lost is the passion fuelling the wit, and the underlying examination of the relation of men and women as it defines pre-war bourgeois society drifting towards a war which finally arrives like liberation from their stagnant lifestyles. There’s insufficient contrast between the artistic Hesione and Teresa Banham’s philistine Ariadne. It’s hardly surprising Susan Twist’s servant and Jack Carr’s Burglar come off best, for these roles inhabit purely comic territory
Only Ian Hogg’s old Captain Shotover maintains his distinction, in a restrained performance suggesting empire-building based on terror and myth behind a benign surface. There are good things, certainly. If only more variety of expression and longer-term thinking were present to buttress the individual moments.
Lady Ariadne Utterword: Teresa Banham
Burglar: Jack Carr
Ellie Dunn: Laura Elphinstone
Captain Shotover: Ian Hogg
Mazzini Dunn: David Killick
Hector Hushabye: Dale Rapley
Hesione Hushabye: Suzan Sylvester
Boss Mangan: Martin Turner
Nurse Guinness: Susan Twist
Randall Utterword: Howard Ward
Director: Indhu Rubasingham
Designer: Dick Bird
Lighting: Oliver Fenwick
Sound: Matt McKenzie
Movement: Jack Murphy
Voice coach: Patsy Rodenburg
Textual adviser: Sam Adamson
Assistant director: Kelly Wilkinson
2007-03-27 07:44:15