JOHNSON OVER JORDAN by J.B. Priestley West Yorkshire Playhouse

Leeds

JOHNSON OVER JORDAN

by J.B. Priestley

West Yorkshire Playhouse (Quarry Theatre) to 29 September 2001

Runs 1hr 40mins No interval

TICKETS 0113 213 7700

Review Timothy Ramsden 14 September

More than sixty years on, Priestley’s expressionist stage adventure receives a mixed production in his home county.Johnson died in 1939. The play’s about an Everyman’s journey after death (at least a white, middle-class heterosexual Everyman), but despite its rich ingredients – Basil Dean directing, Benjamin Britten composing, Ralph Richardson starring - the first production died at the box office and in the review columns. Its vast canvas hasn’t since been seen professionally till Playhouse director Jude Kelly’s current resurrection with Patrick Stewart back from Star Wars to undertake Johnson’s celestial journey.

Each act starts on earth but soon shifts to Johnson’s afterlife – though ‘after’ is inexact with a playwright who saw existence either as coming round again, or eternally present. Stewart’s inert face is initially played on a vast screen and it’s a shocking moment when he leaps from bed, every inch the unreflective office worker, to enter a bureaucratic phantasmagoria, a nightmare world where forms are never completed and objects never gained.

Having finally got hold of money, he spends it in act two, a bestial night-club guilt-trip where pleasure sours. Only in act three has Johnson completed his education, putting love above money and standing ready to serenely go where no man has knowingly gone.

It’s unsurprising the play’s expressionism and focus on death were resisted as Britain sung closer to war. But it is surprising Kelly cuts Johnson’s final speech, even though its verse isn’t the finest. There’s also some uneasy updating, where new and original expressions sit awkwardly together.

Rae Smith’s expressive set provides a claustrophobic wall that is gradually smashed through, then a sleek and shallow hotspot for sleekly shallow clubbers, before opening to the full-depth void of Johnson’s future adventure. But, Stewart’s precise Johnson apart, the performances are variable and after the busily simplistic first act, aptly set around Johnson’s deathbed, the focus is lost in the chaos of an ill-co-ordinated middle act staging. Only in the final scene, soaked in Sarah Collins’ expressive two-piano score, does the production finally grip.

2001-09-24 01:23:09