HONEYMOON SUITE. To 7 February.
London.
HONEYMOON SUITE
by Richard Bean.
Royal Court (Jerwood Theatre Downstairs) To 7 February 2004.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat + 5 February 3.30pm Education matinee 29 January 2.30pm.
Audio-described 7 February 3.30pm.
BSL Signed 27 January.
Captioned 5 February 7.30pm.
Gala Performance 21 January.
Runs 1hr 40min No interval.
TICKETS: 020 7565 5000.
www.royalcourttheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 January.
The set's realistic, the dramatic structure uses realism unrealistically, implying big questions.
At first sight, Hayden Griffin's blandly tasteful seaside-hotel bedroom suggests the Royal Court's about to give us an unlikely dose of Ayckbourn. This room's stayed pristine unlike its guests - despite no change of décor for 50 years. Ayckbourn also stands behind the play's staging trick, interweaving three visits across half a century. To what extent are the three couples (some more coupled than other) the same people? The play both asserts and questions their identity: one life history, three varying manifestations of character apiece.
It's a drama of life and death, cunningly constructed (consider, for instance, the way Richard Bean plays with exposition over the male character's nickname) and in the end far from the comedy it first seemed just as undying, embarrassed love barely survives the first day.
At quarter-century intervals smart young Eddie changes to business bluffer Tits then 67-year old post-hippy Whitchell. It's a downwards slide, to whichever Hell - alongside Hull's declining trawler industry, while initially devoted Irene rises through night-classes, new attachments and a university degree. She ends up a smart authority figure, though liable as her husband to cause destruction.
Bean injects humour, helped by Paul Miller's well-staged production. But the down beat's the most forceful, Whitchell finally pouring fuel for the flames of self-immolation over the love-making bodies of his honeymooning youth.
Bean successfully compresses. these lives (his more vividly than hers) in his interweaved hotel-room encounters, giving structural focus and economy to the story of unsuited people, and showing how a tidal wave called life crashes into people, as the shoreline waves eradicate newlywed Eddie's love message in the sand.
The men play well, John Alderton allowing Whitchell's angry frustration to stab through his placid manner. The women are outstanding, from Sara Beharrell's fifties bride, all smiles and sexual caution, (already showing determined planning for life) through Caroline O' Neill's middle-aged wife on the cusp of independence to Marjorie Yates' political peer, confident and shrewd yet with a world-weary sense that creates a continuity which her teen-bride self would never have dreamed might be.
Whitchell: John Alderton.
Irene: Sara Beharrell.
Eddie: Liam Garrigan.
Izzy: Caroline O' Neill.
Tits: Jeremy Swift.
Marfleet: Marjorie Yates.
Director: Paul Miller.
Designer: Hayden Griffin.
Lighting: Andy Phillips.
Music: Terry Davies.
Fight director: Terry King.
Dialect coach: William Conacher.
Assistant designer: Riette Hayes-Davies.
2004-01-20 14:37:11