HOME FIRES. To 24 February.
.Lancaster
HOME FIRES
by Lesley Anne Rose
Dukes Playhouse To 24 February 2007
Tue-Thu 7.30pm Fri/Sat 8pm Mat 15, 24 Feb 2pm
BSL Signed 17 Feb
Runs 2hr 15min One interval
TICKETS: 0845 344 0644
www.dukes-lancaster.org
Review: Timothy Ramsden 10 February
Embers and ashes rather than flames and heat.
Lancaster’s repertory, The Dukes, has no conurbation to draw on, nor the scenic splendour of Keswick’s Lakeland theatre further north. So it’s brave to put on a new play, albeit one drawing on local references and World War II interest.
Lesley Anne Rose brings together – though never quite together as she flickers between 2003 and 1943 – 4 generations of a family’s mothers and daughters. Men are absent in this century’s scenes and a minimal, troublesome presence in the last, where an absent husband’s unloved and overseas soldier-sweethearts mean pregnancy, disease and desertion. Otherwise, there are just soldiers and civilians on screen, in the several wartime film inserts.
Cinema binds Lucy, who teaches the subject, to her grandmother, a cinema usherette. It’s grandmother Lily whose death has led to the 2003 clear-out which uncovers her 1943 Mass Observation diary. And Lily’s visits to mother Nella introduce the idea of a supernatural connection between the women, Nella’s ability to see the dead transmuting to her grand-daughter’s Greenham Common activities; both seem another world to Lucy’s generation..
There’s enough here for a good new play, but comparison with Charlotte Keatley’s My Mother Said, also involving a family’s 4 female generations, shows how much more intricately rich the idea can be. And, with dramaturgical support plus more drafts, Rose’s play might have reached a similar level.
Instead, she’s let down by a plodding production. Director Ian Hastings lets the action trudge on, one side of the stage for each era (with, fittingly, a domestic fire each, coal for 43, electric for 03), but placing Lily’s several conversations with co-usherette Ella where usherettes often stand, by the theatre door. It’s the wrong sort of realism and derails these scenes, leaving an empty stage where projected archive documentary film, in grainy black-and-white, flashes swift-changing images and tugs attention from actors and play.
Hastings’ female cast are efficient but only really find energy in the wartime scenes (the modern ones are less well-written), while the male character is played with a tentative flatness reflecting he’s a spare part in what would be better as an all-women play.
Nella: Roberta Kerr
Lily: Pip Chapman
Sally: Eithne Browne
Lucy: Alison Holroyd
Ella: Catherine Kinsella
Sam: Mark Plonsky
Director: Ian Hastings
Designer: Paul Kondras
Lighting: Brent Lees
Sound: Julie Washington
2007-02-13 17:03:35