LOVE CHILD. To 17 March.

London

LOVE CHILD
by Joanna Murray-Smith

FinboroughTheatre Finborough Pub 118 Finborough Road SW10 9ED To 17 March 2007
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Sun 3.30pm
Runs 1hr 10min No interval;

TICKETS: 0870 4000 838
www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 25 February

A title with two words that take on shades of meaning in a fine production.
Two women embrace then, after an over-long blackout, meet for the first time. If only getting to know each other were as easy and spontaneous as that first, imagined clinch. Instead, Billie’s search for long-lost mother Anna opens up chasms that divide more quickly and almost as completely as the years of separation.

Australian writer Joanna Murray-Smith’s best-known in Britain for Honour, which succeeded wildly in the Cottesloe and did respectably in a (different) West End production. Its marital tensions translate into generational terms in this shorter play, explored through cultural assumptions. However strong the bloodline appears to be, the family you love don’t necessarily fall in with what you like or make part of your cultural furnishings.

What you watch – what you don’t watch - on TV becomes a social signifier, easily turning into a social stigmatiser. Anna’s youthful radicalism similarly contrasts Billie’s content as she wears the easy smile of the beautiful success in an age of surfaces (the action’s set in 1992). Anna’s sleek, designer minimalist home bears names which mean nothing to Billie, while the younger woman’s soap world is untrodden territory to the older.

A sorting-out of what matters in the relationship leads eventually to Murray-Smith’s final plot coup, when the women finally face what they think of each other without any emotional blurring. This brings a sudden, sharp discord that sees the dialogue slipping gear, fragmenting and newly competitive.

All this is splendidly played in Nicolette Kay’s Finborough production, the play’s London premiere. If ‘Fringe’ carries negative connotations in quality (as opposed to enterprise and innovation) terms then this isn’t Fringe. Kay’s direction sculpts all the script’s mood-shifts, the awkward uncertainties, disappointments and hopeful conversational sallies. Alex Marker’s set, from floor to tasteful designer accoutrements, could grace any stage.

And there are two impeccable performances, Charlotte Lucas giving Billie the happy facility of someone who expects to be recognised on a doorstep, Kristin Milward’s Anna more self-conscious and aware of the modifications she has to make towards the new arrival in her life. This is another valuable Finborough addition to the London repertoire.

Billie: Charlotte Lucas
Anna: Kristin Milward

Director: Nicolette Kay
Designer: Alex Marker
Lighting: Tom White
Sound: Crispin Anderson
Music: Dimitar Penthev
Assistant director: Alex Summers

2007-03-02 00:45:02