I OUGHT TO BE IN PICTURES. To 3 July.
Scarborough
I OUGHT TO BE IN PICTURES
by Neil Simon
Stephen Joseph Theatre (The Round) In rep to 3 July 2004
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 2.30pm
Audio-described 16 June, 19 June 2.30pm
BSL Signed 2 July
Runs 2hr 25min One interval
TICKETS: 01723 370541
Review: Timothy Ramsden 29 May
What Simon says on this subject is very limited.It should be apt, seeing Neil Simon in Scarborough. His comedies share with Alan Ayckbourn's a rare combination of popularity and critical respect. Both mine a similar social seam. Yet the difference between them is key.
Simon's works bear a sheen of plasticity. Every line's crafted, the wit and one-liners are conscious creations. Rather than arising independently from the character's minds, they're placed as appropriate by the playwright. That's a limitation, but one within which Simon is perfect master of the territory.
Ayckbourn approaches darker human and social territory. The laughs (especially when engendered by females) arise from perplexity and responses to unexpected situations and stresses. Simon's is the consciously paired Odd Couple; Ayckbourn's pairs started out married people who've discovered they're mismatched.
Simon produces comedy in a knowing, sophisticated style his precision dialogue could provide a masterclass. But his characters are always on parade. The depths of experience, and empathy rather than recognition or sympathy, aren't his way. And anyway, this play doesn't deliver what its title says.
The play's largely a two-hander, with a daughter searching out her father who left home, now struggling to make a living scripting for Hollywood. It's a potentially intense, self-revelatory situation, the two discovering or uncovering things about themselves and their relationship with the other. A voyage of discovery Eugene O' Neill might have mined with less surface entertainment, but greater eventual satisfaction. Just the sort of thing not suited to the consciously plotted journeys on which Simon's dramaturgy thrives.
And adherents of the form won't like this it's not a play suited to staging in the round. The Round's strength lies in the truth of a situation; this play works by contriving an appearance of truth. The reality of characters circling around each other, testing their relationship, should work, but despite good individual performances there's a contradiction between the fluidity of action and the pull towards a centre-stage focus the script seems to demand.
The transatlantic transfer doesn't come off. To make the most of this thematic area, Ayckbourn should have written his own I Ought To Be In Pictures.
Libby: Laura Doddington
Steffy: Julie Hewlett
Herb: Bill Champion
Director: Laurie Sansom
Designer: Pip Leckenby
Lighting: Jo Dawson
Costume: Christine Wall
2004-06-21 17:54:45