HOUSE and GARDEN. To 8 October.

Harrogate

HOUSE and GARDEN
by Alan Ayckbourn

Harrogate Theatre To 8 October 2005
Mon-Wed, Fri 7.30pm Thu 5.45pm & 9.30pm Sat 2pm & 7.30pm
BSL Signed (Garden) 28 September
Captioned 1 Oct 2pm (House)5 Oct (Garden)
Runs 2hr 35min One interval

TICKETS: 01423 502116
www.harrogatetheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 22 September

Round and round the house and garden (not to mention theatre) in comic seriousness.An iron-curtain has fallen across Harrogate Theatre; the safety-curtain dividing the performance area in two, with a fore-stage built over the front-stalls to provide the setting for Alan Ayckbourn's House, while backstage audiences are seated on a tiered-grassy bank for its companion play Garden. Ayckbourn's device is that one cast performs both plays simultaneously, moving between the 2 acting areas.

At the Scarborough premiere and in subsequent productions this has involved 2 auditoria in one building. At Harrogate, the single divided space means sound carries between the two shows. Realistic enough, even with a mansion and grounds like those of county bigwig Teddy Platt. And when you're on your second play, there's the added dimension as sounds prompt reminders of scenes already seen.

There's no doubt House is the more compact, serious drama. But seeing Garden first (as I did) points up Teddy's loneliness deserted by his dog at the end of Garden, then seen isolated from the start in his own House.

Garden also gives more space to local characters reminiscent of Ayckbourn's seventies comedies, notably a local couple arguing contentedly over details of the village fete they're helping organise in the mansion grounds (Lorraine Cheshire and Pete Dunwell excellently suggesting underlying compatibility beneath the mini-quarrels, and a mutual tolerance unknown up in society's more self-conscious strata).

Yet in the linking theme of midlife women coping with crisis, it's Garden's adulterous Joanna who comes off worse. Married to one of Ayckbourn's ineffectual nice guys, James Doherty's honest, smiling Giles, she slips downhill into distraction. Furtive hidings in the bushes, associated with her affair with Teddy, turn into compulsive concealment, till finally the pressed neatness of her husband's Morris dancing kit offsets wild-woman Joanna's torn, leaf-spangled dress.

In this play, Teddys wife Trish has only a single, apparently authoritative appearance. In House she becomes virtual prisoner of the Platt dynasty's encircling gloom (and no dynasty's more encircling than the generations whose portraits assert the family features in Philip Witcomb's set). Yet Harriet Eastcott plays Trish towards the more assured side (Eileen Battye, who created the role at Scarborough, showed a character near the point of dissolution).

This fits director Hannah Chissick's view of the plays, generally steering a comparatively optimistic course, though never denying the real pain, submerged and exposed, both contain. It reveals the strange way the most malicious-seeming actions do most good. By ignoring her husband, Trish knows she's spoiling things for him, but she actually saves him potentially more disastrous public exposure.

And, while Kevin McGowan makes political enforcer Gavin Ring-Mayne's nastiness vividly clear, the oily political machine-man is positively beneficial in bringing the Platt daughter Sally down to reality. In contrast, the reticent decency of Giles Mace and his son Jake, besotted with the self-fancying Sally, watches ineffectually as things grow worse. While seeing House first is likely to focus on Trish's trauma, after a view of Garden it's her eventual strength that stands out.

Chissick has achieved quite a feat in mounting these plays in one space. After taking over the Turkish Baths for Steaming this summer, it's clear this is a repertory company with an eye to shape-shifting adventure. Long may it continue. There's not a weak performance in this cast. But there has to be mention of Miranda Cook as Fran, a visiting film-star's minder. This undemonstrative character, sensible, assertive and strong-minded, is played with maximum inner energy and minimum external fuss. It's particularly fine acting in a notable production.

Lucille Cadeau: Helen Anderson-Lee
Sally Platt: Alisa Arnah
Jake Mace: Pete Ashmore
Joanna Mace: Gaynor Barrett
Warn Coucher: Martin Bendel
Teddy Platt: Robin Bowerman
Pearl Truce: Laura Checkley
Lindy Love: Lorraine Cheshire
Fran Briggs: Miranda Cook
Giles Mace: James Doherty
Barry Love: Pete Dunwell
Trish Platt: Harriet Eastcott
Gavin Ring-Mayne: Kevin McGowan
Izzie Truce: Kate Rutter
Village Children: Holly Drinkwater, Robert Everard, Heather Goodacre, Katie Goodacre, Maisie Latto, Jessica Miley, Luke Nugent, Sophie Nugent/Rebecca Borchard, Heather Cameron, Rhys Clarke, Jade Garlick, Amy Price, Helena Trewhitt, Ghilyon Welby-Jenkins, Rachel Williams

Director: Hannah Chissick
Designer: Philip Witcomb
L8ighting: David Holmes
Sound: Maurice Stewart
Fight director: Kevin McCurdy
Assistant director: Phil Lowe

2005-09-27 18:31:36