LOVE'S A LUXURY. To 3 July.

London/Scarborough

LOVE'S A LUXURY
by Guy Paxton and Edward V Hoile

Orange Tree Theatre To 29 May then Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough in rep 3 June-3 July 2004
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Sat 4pm
Post-show discussion 20 May (Orange Tree)
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 2.30pm (Scarborough)
Runs 2hr 15min One interval

TICKETS: 020 8940 3633
www.orangetreetheatre.co.uk (Orange Tree)
01723 370541 (Scarborough)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 18 May 2004

Fine weather, a country cottage, people in love. What could go wrong? Everything.Anyone for whom theatre starts at Brecht and runs back through Bond to Beckett or Barker (all of them killingly funny at moments) is unlikely to plump for this reactionary, frivolous, complacently middle-class period piece. Liking it's shameful, maybe, but it is a peach.

Originally seen (briefly) in 1942, it was ten years later Paxton and Hoile's farce came to prominence. Just in time, before such things were swept away by the mighty advance of the English Stage Company and a new seriousness, applying even to humour. Sam Walters's excellent production shows that, as a laughter machine, it works with smooth efficiency on a small stage in the round.

Historical imagination's needed to find the action hysterical; it's necessary to believe in the iron hand of marriage. Though Emma Gregory's youthful and sweet-mannered on the surface, she carries a strong sense of the matriarch As much as Sailor Beware's doughty dowager, Mrs Pentwick is a fearsome preserver of connubial and household stability on behalf of whose complacency no sacrifice or stratagem is too great. Do anything, that is, to keep her unaware of the scent of possible impropriety.

Compared with her tremendous female respectability, even tight-fisted theatrical impresario Pentwick trembles (Philip York, with an hilarious facial and vocal mix of shock and authority).

His lying and conniving, along with famed actor Bobby Bentley (Jason Baughan, eagerly falling in love in drag), forms the farce's idiotic spiral of delights. Their interrogation, as high-ranking detectives, of a naïve boys' camp leader is a high comic point, greatly helped by Roger Sloman's hyper-active Mole awestruck and gobsmacked, fearfully scurrying with bent-knees, forever miming with nervous arms, or going on the attack when he fears being shamed. Sloman's eyebrows alone deserve an Olivier.

There's plenty of love-interest. Roisin Rae does the sexually aware type (you can tell as she cavorts in bathing costume), though fearfully respectable too. As the sentimental, actress-turned-parlourmaid heroine Claudia Elmhirst glams up gorgeously, also turning in a platinum-level portrayal of intelligence and resourcefulness. All silly-season stuff of course, but take it as you find it and you'll find it's a joy.

Molly: Claudia Elmhirst
Charles Pentwick: Philip York
Bobby Bentley: Jason Baughan
Mr Mole: Roger Sloman
Fritzy Villiers: Roisin Rae
Dick Pentwick: Patrick Myles
Mrs Charles Pentwick: Emma Gregory
Mrs Harris: Eliza Hunt

Director: Sam Walters
Designer: Pip Leckenby
Lighting: John Harris
Costume: Christine Wall

2004-05-19 10:29:50