LIVING UNDER ONE ROOF: Holder, Theatre Royal Nottingham till 30 June

Nottingham

LIVING UNDER ONE ROOF: Lorna Holder
Theatre Royal: Tkts 0115 989 5555 www.royalcentre-nottingham.co.uk
Runs: 2h 30m: one interval: till 30th June [touring]
Performance times: 7.30pm, [matinee 2.00pm Wed]
Review: Alan Geary: 26 June 2007

A ramshackle and highly missable production.
Writer/director Lorna Holder seems to have worked on this play since it came to the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham last year. But despite the addition of an interval it’s still hopelessly over-long, probably because, especially before the break, it’s too wordy.

Holder is too reliant on clunky information lines to feed the audience with crucial and sometimes absurdly melodramatic background detail about her characters. And these are often delivered in a declamatory and unrealistic way. What’s more, one or two of the actors speak the patois in such a way as to render it incomprehensible. There were - this is true - Jamaicans in the audience who couldn’t understand what was going on.

Some of the acting is distressingly plank-like, although we get reasonable performances from Rachael Young, as long-suffering landlady Blossom and Trevor Georges, as Samson. Initially the latter appears to be a lovable Jack the Lad but he turns out to be altogether more sinister and destructive.

Until some over-rushed last-minute developments just before you’re allowed home you seem to be watching two or three tragedies unfolding simultaneously.

Besides its obvious subject matter, the problems facing the first West Indian immigrants to Nottingham, this is about the strength and resourcefulness of women contrasted with the fecklessness of their menfolk.

The period - it’s 1961 - is well established: there are plenty of manufacturing jobs to be had and the prospect of moving into a high-rise council flat is welcome. Costumes are also done well, though why Kathy (Nikki Sanderson), the only white character in the play, insists on wearing a trench coat throughout is never properly explained. Perhaps it’s to combat the damp caused by the dodgy roof.

Sanderson’s less than brilliant performance is made worse by an appalling blonde wig which hides her when she turns sideways. After the interval she wears a headband, which is an improvement.

Compared with Cathy Tyson, who played Lattisha last year, Alicya Eyo is a disappointment. And, despite her genuine French background, Samantha McDonald, reappearing as Dorothy, still has an accent which sounds oddly like a Jamaican/‘Allo ‘Allo hybrid.

Cast
Carl: Geoff Alexander
Blossom: Rachael Young
Dorothy: Samantha McDonald
Millicent: Marsha Miller
Samson: Trevor Georges
Lattisha: Alicya Eyo
Derek: Heshima Thompson
Kathy: Nikki Sanderson

Director/Writer: Lorna Holder
Designer: Sarah Frampton
Lighting Designer: Un-credited

2007-06-27 08:27:57