LOSING LOUIS.
London
LOSING LOUIS
by Simon Mendes da Costa
Hampstead Theatre To 19 February 2005
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 3pm
Audio-described 16 Feb
BSL Signed 2 Feb
Captioned 15 Feb
After-show discussion 8 Feb
Runs 2hr 20min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7722 9301
www.hampsteadatheatre.com
Transfers to Trafalgar Studios 23 Feb 2005 Tickets: 0870 060 6632.
Bright, unhackneyed examination of family guilt and relationships.It's like old times at Hampstead: Robin Lefevre directing with piercingly perceptive comic detail matched to precise sense of character and Alison Steadman returning to a play with eerie similarities to Shelagh Stephenson's Hampstead-born The Memory of Water where siblings also meet at a parent's funeral, with a prominent bed in the room and a wardrobe that has a Narnia like variety of existence.
Simon Mendes da Costa has a killing humour; audience ears are pinned back for joke-telling at a funeral, and he has a way of going one step further than expected with the surprises. He places revelations to help the plot without seeming intrusive. His play's structure, opening out from ecstatic bedroom foreplay (the single moment of unalloyed joy) to a wider vista of relationships and guilt, is admirably achieved.
All of which, in this creamily-cast piece, helps disguise that between the laughter and time-shifts across half a century, we have the good old familiar Hampstead play of adultery and strained relationships. But re-born afresh.
The expected blonde bimbo is an intelligent lawyer-in-the-making. It's the wife who's slow-witted, but Emma Cunniffe speaks for her practical strength in life's tense moments before da Costa puts her through traumatic events enough to prevent easy condescension.
Relationships across a generation, and between Jew, adoptive Jew and non-Jew, are explored with comic seriousness. In addition to Briem there's Steadman, exception to any rule about an actor's need for economy. Every reaction, every line is a treat that's tied close to her character; see the moment she shoots off like a middle-aged Exocet to claim a clock as inheritance (da Costa makes this item, like the unseen Nina, utterly real).
Jason Durr's Louis in the 1950s has an attractive elegance with an apt sense of wantonness to take advantage of it, while David Horovitch (another excellent actor well-known here) as his son, apparently a menace as a boy, seen in the modern scenes as older than we have seen his dad, gives a finely-controlled picture of self-destruction. Brian Protheroe and Lynda Bellingham have less explosive roles but play with equal skill and understanding.
Elizabeth: Lynda Bellingham
Bella: Anita Briem
Bobbie: Emma Cunniffe
Louis: Jason Durr
Tony: David Horovitch
Reggie: Brian Protheroe
Sheila: Alison Steadman
Director: Robin Lefevre
Designer: Liz Ascroft
Lighting: Mick Hughes
Sound: John Leonard
2005-01-28 16:48:58