LULLABIES OF BROADMOOR. To 31 January.
London
LULLABIES OF BROADMOOR
by Steve Hennessy
Finborough Theatre To 31 January 2004
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Sun 3.30pm
Runs 2hr 40min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7373 3842
www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk
www.thefinborough.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 21 January
No doubting the quality both of writing and construction in Steve Hennessy's double-bill; his characters resonate in the mind the morning after- if, first, you get home safely, that is - The Murder Club concerns a killing just down Finborough Road from the theatre. Hennessy's young prostitute Olive was battered for calling her client Ronny, not Ronald. Charlotte Pyke's ghostly presence retains the sharpness of her earthly streetlife, mixed with amused toleration of such deadly events.
Her killer meets up in Broadmoor with self-fancying Richard Prince, who had stabbed famed actor William Terriss decades earlier. At this play's centre is a fascinating duel between these dandy-killers, a power game played out by someone who fancies the scratch prisoner band is a mighty symphony orchestra playing his beloved Elgar. Adopting the sublime Nimrod' variation to these murky quarters offers a comment on the glories of self-confident imperial Britain.
Just as the references to mass gassings in Iraq jolts minds to the present day. But no, there they were in the play's 1922 setting a state-sanctioned murder club to outmatch the one devised as a stratagem by True to nobble Prince.
These acts of murder are linked by war, which lies in the background of night-haunted murdering Minor in the second play. Joining them too is John Coleman, the warder played by Marc Danbury with a convincingly naïve and seedy energy.
In Wilderness we meet the haunted Dr Minor, who made a significant contribution to the Oxford English Dictionary from his prison-cell. Like much external information in this double-bill it's used to elaborate a character whose interior processes are the focus of interest.
Steve Hennessy has a flair for visual moments that summarise character and writes satisfyingly gritty, fluent dialogue. His plays contrast the psycho-duel between the criminally insane Broadmoor inmates of the first play with an individual nightmare in the second. Both again in contrasting manner place a single female in a male environment. These women are, in different senses, victims, yet both speak with convincingly assertive voices.
The two plays might thrive in a larger space, and with more vocal subtlety at points in the male prisoner roles. But the Finborough's searched out yet another individual theatre voice from whom we ought to hear more.
The Murder Club:
Richard Prince: Chris Courtenay
John Coleman: Marc Danbury
Ronald True: Andy Michell
Olive Young: Charlotte Pyke
Wilderness:
Dr William Chester Minor: Chris Courtenay
John Coleman: Marc Danbury
Eliza Merrett: Natalie Hobday
George Merrett: Andy Michell
Director: Caitriona McLaughlin
Designer: Colin Williams
Lighting: Tim Bartlett
Sound: Hoxa Sound
Costume: Penn O'Gara
2004-01-26 12:25:44