I HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE. To 19 March.
Watford
I HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE
by J B Priestley
Palace Theatre To 19 March 2005
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Sat 3pm
Audio-described 19 March 3pm
Captioned 18 March
Runs 2hr 35min One interval
TICKETS: 01923 225671
www.watfordtheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 9 March
Some fine performances in an over-fussy, sometimes stiff production.Since the central, much-evident idea of this play is only one staged removed from flat-earthery in its lack of general modern credibility, how has this 1937 drama remained among Priestley's most performed? Possibly because the idea that lives recur, either repeating the same existence or giving the chance to develop in new ways, is handled unsentimentally.
Priestley goes out of his way to rebuff vague mysticism. The Germanic Dr Gortler who expounds the theories Priestley took from P D Ouspensky is a refugee from Nazism. He's no detached onlooker but passionate, growing angry when turfed out of the Yorkshire moors inn where he's come to save others' lives from misery.
Then too, Priestley relates this idea to one running through his literary and political work: interdependence there has to be such a thing as society. The last appearance of this idea brings happiness Sally Pratt, the landlord's daughter, a widow who lives for her son Charlie. The joy and relief on Candida Gubbins' face when Sally learns her son is safe thanks to Gortler's intervention is a fine moment of human feeling.
Whatever it does to the heart, absence here blurs memories of beloved faces. At the play's own heart a tragic view of the world is considered before Priestley steers the action towards hope, facing the prospect of failure but offering the hope of success.
If only director Jeremy Bond had trusted this fine play more fully, not opening with a battery of b-movie effects and a tick-tock rhythm - later repeated as Ormund taps his face to it; how much underlining is the play expected to bear? Later, stars shine, the inn walls gain a translucency revealing mists unnecessarily swirling with Dante-esque enthusiasm.
Yet Gortler's departure, through a briefly-glimpsed second proscenium, as if into another dimension of life gives a momentary thrill. As does the moment Priestley's hero, the businessman Walter Ormund, steps out of the set's realistic frame.
This over-production is accompanied by some stiffness in the acting, though there are good moments, like Jenny Ogilvie's wife, intuitively alert when Gortler tells his tale. Gordon Langford-Rowe is outstanding as the academic, while Roger Bingham's Sam, contentment personified, gives a fine portrait of a man for whom repeated existence would be a joy as his golden memory of a wedding-day with cricket beautifully shows.
Sam Shipley: Roger Bingham
Sally Pratt: Candida Gubbins
Walter Ormund: John Hodgkinson
Dr Gortler: Gordon Langford-Rowe
Janet Ormund: Jenny Ogilvie
Oliver Farrant: Adam Smethurst
Director: Jeremy Bond
Designer: Patrick Connellan
Lighting: Julian McCready
Music: Zap! Music
2005-03-10 01:02:33