I LIKE MINE WITH A KISS. TO 17 March.

London

I LIKE MINE WITH A KISS
by Georgia Fitch

Bush Theatre To 17 March 2007
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Sat 3pm
BSL Signed 10 March 3pm
Runs 2hr 10min One interval

TICKETS: 020 7610 4224
www.bushtheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 24 February

Midlife crises of the female kind.
Before saying hello to Georgia Fitch’s new play, it’s farewell and great thanks to its director (and Bush Theatre artistic director for a decade) Mike Bradwell. In an age accentuating the visual Bradwell has stuck with the importance of the writer and the word. Always scrupulous in his direction, he has carried out the Bush’s work as a theatre for emerging writers at the highest level.

His final production might seem to start among the energetic night-life of 20-somethings. But the faces betray something else. Louise and Annie are close on 40, and her birthday party sees schoolteacher Lou raving drunkenly but atypically.

Later, though childless, she goes to solace Annie’s truculent teenage daughter with the assurance “I am quite good with teenagers”. Then the women both face the sudden prospect of childbirth (Fitch builds the unlikeliness into her dialogue), with different responses. And while Lou veers between unsatisfactory relationships with 2 men Annie’s former husband remains a mystery, its sinister solution revealed late on as she talks to her mother Jean.

Jean represents a couple of vanishing points. At 65 she’s from a generation that could still trust to family solidity. And, resolutely working-class in attitude and shopping, she’s the world Annie and Lou have moved away from.

But the links are there in both cases. Annie’s 16-year old daughter Freya still moves flexibly, staying with gran or forming a close friendship with an ultra-smartset high achiever. For a time.

Fitch’s drama shows life as a series of events and offers a fine panorama of relationships among its people, ending with Annie’s realisation how hard it is to become independent of her mother’s influence, something expressed as a sign of closeness to Lou.

There’s a limitation in the focus on the theme-related parts of characters’ lives. Lou’s teaching, Annie’s aromatherapy get references but play no part in the action. Bradwell’s direction, and his cast, are exemplary, especially Michelle Butterly who gives Lou a wide range of realisation and makes every decision, or indecision, credible, and Heather Craney’s Annie, with a smile for her friend to cover her own dilemmas.

Jean: Linda Broughton
Louise: Michelle Butterly
Jim: Ruairi Conaghan
Annie: Heather Craney
Mathieu: Andrew French
Freya: Jade Williams

Director: Mike Bradwell
Designer: Libby Watson
Lighting: James Farncombe
Sound: David Benke
Assistant director: Nadia Latif

2007-02-25 12:44:24