LOVE CHILD. To 9 July.
Eye
LOVE CHILD
by Joanna Murray-Smith
Eye Theatre To 9 July 2005
Tue-Sat 8pm Mat Sat 4pm
Runs 1hr 10min theninterval + discussion Total c2hr 10min
TICKETS: 01379 870519
01449 676800 (credit cards)
boxoffice@eyetheatre.freeserve.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 6 July
Fine final offering from a theatre sadly destined to go dark.This is a sad occasion, but not a depressing one. The sadness doesn't arise from Australian Joanna Murray-Smith's play about a 42-year old mother and the daughter, removed for adoption at birth, who's sought her out. It's that the intense drama brings down the (non-existent) curtain on 14 years of theatre-making in Eye. Tom Scott's venture has lasted far longer than anyone would reasonably have expected; a one-person operation in a village-size community (even if, like Eye, it has a Town Hall).
But dwindling audiences over the last 2 years have come to this crunch. They're not related to the quality of work; social trends that have hit many theatres have overwhelmed a brave operation in a rural part of England where decent theatre would, it might be thought, have been nurtured. However, between the folly of the Dome and the razzmatazz of 2012 such little things easily slip away unnoticed. Except by audiences who always meant to go, or try and go more often. Unfortunately, it's only the tickets actually bought that count towards survival.
This finale is a British premiere of a 1993 piece from a playwright, Honoured at the National Theatre but otherwise unknown here. There's a contrast from the start between Dorothy Lawrence's mother, sleek, fashionable in tight-lined black and Elisa Maree Williams' Billie, all flowing lines, bright patterns and effusiveness. Murray-Smith gives her the opening voice, a tightly-lit monologue backed by romantic Rachmaninov (its climax not quite coinciding with her speech's apogee). Her rush to connect contrasts the understandable reserve of the woman who, quarter of a century back in the late sixties, was separated at 17 from the flesh created in a naive shipboard romance.
That experience, and her generational influence, has made Anna a feminist. It doesn't take long for the women to discover differences mother edits nature documentaries, daughter plays in soaps and has no problem with a contractual nudity clause.
Such things prove water to the rush of blood just as well as the cultural opposites are over-deliberately set-up. When the embracing begins it's followed by a further surprise revelation, setting a new tension worked through in a sudden switch to fragmentary dialogue. Mamet-like in manner, it's actually very unlike the American writer in impact. In Mamet the fight is with inarticulacy of feelings, with oppositional positions. Here, the fast-paced pellets of speech and interruption work through an ultimate desire for reconciliation. And, finally, both women have a voice in the closing monologues. An adventurous choice that's the opposite of depressing, well played by Lawrence and Australian soap-actor Williams, in a production by Scott which more than justifies this theatre's existence.
Anna: Dorothy Lawrence
Billie: Elisa Maree Williams
Director: Tom Scott
Lighting: David Hermon
2005-07-10 14:33:58