LARKIN WITH WOMEN. To 26 October.
Leeds
LARKIN WITH WOMEN
by Ben Brown
West Yorkshire Playhouse (Courtyard Theatre) To 26 October 2002
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Thu & Sat 2.30pm
Audio-described 15, 19 October 7.45pm 17 October 2.30pm
BSL signed 18 October
Captioned 22 October
Runs 2hr 5min One interval
TICKETS 0113 213 7700
Review Timothy Ramsden 5 October
A fascinating view of a leading 20th century English poet starts the West Yorkshire's look at Larkin, though in an indifferent production.They stare out from programme photos: severe-spectacled, middle-aged, mid-century women - and man, occasionally laughing. He's Hull university Librarian Philip Larkin, the poet who showed, with verse output, size doesn't measure significance. It's clear, even in this lukewarm revival, that while Larkin publicly stated sexual intercourse began in 1963, he'd been more or less furtively at it behind the book-stacks rather than the bike-sheds for years before the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles' first LP.
This is a world that's cold rather than cool - before style, colour and central-heating warmed up post-war Britain - its last days locking into the unknowns of computerisation and management-speak. When brown-enveloped adults-only mags could bring a knee-trembling threat from the Vice Squad. Though this one turns out a practical joke from a friend: these bright guys never quite grew up.
Middle-aged sex never plays as happily as teenage romance. The script may be willing but the flesh has lost its tone. That's apt enough here. There's a lone-ness, somehow only increased by the strung-out length of Larkin's relationships. Here's a man who doesn't want his long-time flame to find a job at Hull; a Library chief who rifles through his own staff's affections.
Brian Brady's revival gives a sense of this world, but rarely attains close-focus. Matthew Wright's set, revolving between home and office, shows the comfortlessly ordinary quality of Larkin's life, but the implied book-stack surrounds, doubling as screens for occasional projected verses, don't integrate with the acting space. They're bisected by a bed; there's a chilling moment when it becomes clear this is no sexual home, only being used for Larkin's illness - it's only in the final procession to his bedside that the three women in this play almost meet.
Christopher McHallem has a sense of Larkin but is too vocally undifferentiated to take us close to the character's complexities (his sudden shouted confession of drying-up as a poet is an exception). The three women are well-played but the production presents them as little more than 'feeds' for the despondency in the mysterious dome of Larkin's head.
Philip Larkin: Christopher McHallem
Monica Jones: Sally George
Betty Mackereth: Carolyn Pickles
Maeve Brennan: Gilly Tompkins
Director: Brian Brady
Designer: Matthew Wright
Lighting: Lucy Carter
Sound: Mic Pool
Voice: Susan Stern
2002-10-08 13:46:36