KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS. To 27 September.

Hornchurch

KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS
by Andrew Taylor from the Ealing filmscript by Robert Hamer and John Dighton

Queen's Theatre To 27 September 2003
Tue-Sat 8pm Mat 27 September 2.30pm
Audio-described 27 September 2.30pm
BSL Signed/Backchat 10 September
Runs 2hr 10min One interval

TICKETS: 01708 443333
Review: Timothy Ramsden 1 September

Cosily murderous fun revived with good spirit.OK, it's silly. Innocent fun and a comment on how post-war, socially secure England could laugh at serial murder, provided it was handled jokily (more so than in the Edwardian source novel, where anti-semitism was a key plot feature) and the murderer received come-uppance in the comic vein of his crimes.

Committing these with the right lightness of mood is one production challenge. Repeating the Ealing comedy's bravura playing of all the D' Ascoynes by one actor is the other. Alec Guinness was the multiple-victim on celluloid. Here, it's an ever-versatile Michael Mears. Tall and slim, Mears metamorphoses finely across a wide age-range, as the foolish young D' Ascoyne scion whose end comes first (and can't come soon enough) or the present old Duke whose onstage shooting in a mantrap as he realises his friendly young visitor is out for his blood, comes closest to shocking.

Mears' finest comic moment is as the formidable suffragette Lady Agatha, a handbag warrior distributing leaflets, using her strong right knee to leave an intervening policeman rolling in the aisle. There's touching contrast in the first victim's father, mourning his son as he promotes the murderer through the private bank he runs. It's a rare, bref moment of feeling when a literal stroke of fate intervenes to make his killing unnecessary - as Jonathan Markwood's suave assassin, with unusual sympathy, admits.

Otherwise, it's a world of grotesques from Mears, from Charlotte Roach's smoothly flirtatious, underlyingly steely-purposed first love, and Steve Edwin's initially contemptuous, later desperate rival suitor.

Amid these, Markwood's Louis quoting the ever-rational Dr Johnson as he revenges his mother's rejection for marrying beneath her by clearing his way to a family Dukedom, with personal humiliations and rejections added in as the action proceeds sounds sweetly reasonable, but needs only a flick of tone for ruthless cold to surface. Once his rapid speech pace aligns to his thought-process, (there were several opening-night verbal trip-ups), and once the trucks which allow Bob Carlton's witty entrances for characters (and their often premature exits) move more quietly, this will be a perfect, unpretentious fun night for the nostalgic and sardonic.

Elliott/Papa/Lionel/Louis' Counsel: Steve Edwin
Prison Warder/Drapery Manager/Harwood the Butler/Policeman/Officer Carruthers/Hoskins the Butler/Crown Counsel/Governor: Chris MacDonnell
Louis Mazzini: Jonathan Markwood
Mama/Kitty L'Amour/Edith: Sarah Redmond
The D'Ascoyne Family: Michael Mears
Sibella: Charlotte Roach

Director: Bob Carlton
Designer: Rodney Ford
Lighting: Chris Jaeger

2003-09-02 13:49:37