LACHLAN'S CHOICE HOTEL. Tour to 27 April.
Tour
LACHLAN'S CHOICE HOTEL
by Simon Little
Brunton Theatre on Tour to 27 April 2002
Runs 2hr 10min One interval
Review Timothy Ramsden 6 April at Byre Theatre, St. Andrews
Brunton Theatre Company's final fling is something of a miffed opportunity.Lachlan's choice was death rather than ignominious flight after the defeat at Culloden. Tommy, present day manager of the hotel commemorating him, with its Martyrs' Bar surrounded by stern-bearded Scottish chieftains, has decisions taken out of his hands. Faced by yet another systems-built chain lodge opening opposite, his bosses have sent in dapper young management fast-tracker Ros to smarten the act or die.
It's a grimly apposite subject for Brunton Theatre Company, whose farewell wave this is. Having supported the current tour (Lachlan's played at the Brunton till the end of March) the Scottish Arts Council – like the local authority, East Lothian - have withdrawn funding.
Whatever the limits of this production, it’s a good deal less shambolic than the goings-on in The Martyrs' Bar, where the action's set. Hotel and play alike are held together by Allan Sharpe's ripe performance as Tommy, though even he can't make a sudden, last-minute return to his roots more than a sentimental add-on.
There's promising work too from Jordan Young as his bar-room sidekick. For the rest, some performances are effortful – Jenny Ryan's conscientious management hack never fully asserts herself, or manages to explain why she joins in Tommy's artful dodges, while Ricky Callan's English accent slips between Birmingham and London without settling in either, in a curiously unfocused performance as the hotel's argumentative chef.
Or they get by, seeming to have given up the effort all together, though both Estrid Barton as the hotel cleaner and mother to a teenage lout, plus Nicol Hay as the lout in question, have little in their roles to make an effort for.
Thomson's direction cannot disguise the structural clumsiness in the script, particularly noticeable in congested entries/exits. It's the kind of thing script workshops are meant to sort out and there's enough in Little's dialogue and his development of a political theme to make such work worthwhile.
Not that politics is hammered hard. But the idea of resistance, and of making personal victories out of general defeat is interesting. Better focused, along with the laughs (and there are some good ones), it could make quite a little jewel of this piece.
Louise: Estrid Barton
Harry: Ricky Callan
Dougie: Nicol Hay
Ros: Jenny Ryan
Tommy: Allan Sharpe
Kenny: Jordan Young
Director: David Mark Thomson
Designer: Edward Lipscomb
Lighting: Fleur Woolford
Tour: April 9-10 Village Theatre East Kilbride, 12 Carnegie Hall Dunfermline, 16-17 Paisley Arts Centre, 19-20 Howden Park Centre Livingston, 23 Corran Halls Oban, 25 Palace Theatre Kilmarnock, 26-27 Cumbernauld Theatre.
2002-04-10 09:18:35