LONDON SUITE. To 14 August.
Milton Keynes/Belfast
LONDON SUITE
by Neil Simon
Milton Keynes Theatre To 7 August
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 2.30pm
then Grand Opera House Belfast 9-14 August
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Thu 2pm & Sat 2.30pm
Runs 2hr 15min One interval
TICKETS: 01908 606090 (Milton Keynes)
028 9024 1919 (Belfast)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 4 August
Kindly comedy with some gently serious undertow, framed by wilder laughing matter.Four playlets set in the same luxury London hotel suite (a reference to economy-class air travel is a sure sign of skulduggery) show Neil Simon's comic skill and limitations. An opening anecdote (despite beginning at gun-point, the lightest slice of the quartet) and a final farce frame two more serious character studies. Simon knows precisely how audience emotional clocks work.
Unsurprisingly from Broadway's leading comic dramatist, there are American links throughout. And a hotel suite, however luxurious in Julie Godfrey's ghastly-good-taste rococo décor, is no resting place.
A scam neatly unravels, a search for missing Wimbledon tickets brings comic disaster. With more emotional substance, a woman fixes her mother with a near-blind date at the National Theatre. It goes horribly wrong. But the horrible wrongness is simply a matter of age's discomforts. There's a mellow touch of later-life romance, and an assertion of family closeness in mother and daughter's shared secrets.
Old lovers reunite in the most substantial piece Diana and Sidney, a more serious emotional adventure in maturity. The writing's build of character and the players' skill disguises the overly-convenient onset of the medical symptoms which bring melancholy and loss to the story.
The scene also shows John Challis's skilful use of detailed facial reactions. Challis (managing convincing transformations of appearance between his scenes) doesn't avoid the straight/mainstream theatre's idea of a camp gay as Sidney; it's in the quieter moments, registering concealed feelings in reply to the bright clatter of Sue Holderness's glamorous TV soap-star ex-wife, the character develops.
Simon never asks actors to go beneath his precision-made surfaces, and self-confident energy serves Holderness's main characters well. Sara Crowe is excellent as a fond daughter and incensed wife. Less predictably, she's strong in the subdued minor role of personal assistant, preparing the main theme of Diana and Sidney's re-meet.
Only the final farce is a let-down. The main issue gets lost and is unconvincingly resolved. Immobilisation by back-pain is used in a contrived, unoriginal way, the attempts at Scottish and Irish characters are clichéd. The audience, though, laughed a lot an indication of the efficiency throughout Mark Piper's production.
Settling Accounts
Brian: Mark Curry
Billy: John Chalolis
Going Home
Lauren: Sara Crowe
Mrs Semple: Sue Holderness
Diana & Sidney
Diana: Sue Holderness
Grace: Sara Crowe
Sidney: John Challis
The Man on the Floor
Mark: Mark Curry
Annie: Sara Crowe
Mrs Sitgood: Sue Holderness
Bellman: Charlie Buckland
Dr McMerlin: John Challis
Director: Mark Piper
Designer: Julie Godfrey
Lighting: Douglas Kuhrt
2004-08-05 10:13:24