LUCKY DOG. To 12 June.

London

LUCKY DOG
by Leo Butler

Royal Court (Jerwood Theatre Upstairs) To 12 June 2004
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Sat 4pm
Runs 1hr 40min No interval

TICKETS 020 7565 5100/5000
www.royalcourttheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 May

The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation. Here's a small sample.Sheffield's a glum place for the Webbers' Christmas. Sue tries injecting stale cheer into their meal, while Eddie steers unwanted food around a desultory plate, forking occasional potatoes out of boredom. His heart's not in it; his mind isn't even on the grown-up son Sue wants him to phone. Only canine companionshipstirs embers of interest in Eddie.

Leo Butler's shaping up as downbeat commentator to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea on the South Yorkshire city where his previous Royal Court play Redundant is also set.

Here's a confined world, with Jean Kalman's anonymous walls running to a tight perspective, a Christmas tree with wearily blinking lights being shifted aside scene-by-scene like last year's decorations. It seems so for Brett, 10-year old delinquent-in-the-making dispatched to auntie Sue's at Christmas. His sullen truculence becomes increasingly explicable as the 58-year old tries to force seasonal jollity on him through carols, the present of a football shirt (wrong team) and her old photo-albums. Amazingly, Brett eventually seems won over by her. Maybe he's merely giving up.

And perhaps she's trying to compensate. The underlying, undefined sadness seems connected to the absent son, seen only as a child playing (on black-and-white video footage) outside the window, looiing in from stilled images. A memory (accurate or not) of days before disruption and dysfunctionality took over.

Butler's structure is striking. His first three scenes are a slow trudge through this dreary Christmas; the last seven an explosion of brief snapshots as the characters move to the sun-soaked Canaries 12 months on. Kalman's stage opens up here too, though the dialogue remains laconic.

The play, though, hardly proves that a change of location is a solution, or how long it can continue. Or that cutting loose from the past is so easy.

Liam Mills offers a fine, unsentimental picture of childhood. Linda Bassett catches the essentials of Sue's character. If she seems rather lively, well, Sue is a confirmed Ian McEwan reader. Alan Williams brings a melted granite quality to Eddie, suffering and hardness finely mixed. James Macdonald's just the man for such relentless stuff.

Eddie Webber: Alan Williams
Sue Webber: Linda Bassett
Brett: Liam Mills

Director: James Macdonald
Designer/Lighting: Jean Kalman
Sound: Ian Dickinson
Video imagery: Allan Parker
Company voice work: Patsy Rodenburg
Assistant director: Maria Aberg
Assistant designer: Anna Calligaro
Assistant Lighting designer: Gavin Owen

2004-05-20 14:37:51