LUNCH WITH MARLENE. To 27 April.
London.
LUNCH WITH MARLENE
by Chris Burgess.
New End Theatre 27 New End NW3 1JD To 27 April 2009.
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat & Sun 3.30pm
Runs 2hr 5min One interval.
TICKETS: 0870 033 2733.
www.newendtheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 30 March.
All terribly, terribly well done.
Because nature ruled otherwise, Noel Coward and Marlene Dietrich had no sexual liaison, making him, a showbiz luminary equalling her stature, a suitable confidante. They often lunched, though never perhaps as here in an anonymous London restaurant with an autograph-hunting waiter who ends up reminding them of age and fleeting fame.
Quite why you’ll probably need to book soon to see, though it’s hard to believe Frank Barrie and Kate O’Mara’s performances in Chris Burgess’s judiciously-structured new piece won’t have a life elsewhere. Somewhere, let’s hope, less stifling than the tiny, steep-raked New End. Heat, however, is the only drawback to this enjoyable production, which fits its first home snugly.
The first act’s late-1960s lunch-date shows Coward suavely assured, despite theatrical fashions having changed, while Dietrich’s disgusted with the trashy films through which her career’s declined. And there’s physical decay. She arrives with disease diagnosed, he leaves to see a doctor.
This lunch-table conversation, with Coward’s side-orders of flirtation with the waiter (did even Noel resort to such obvious double entendres?), is finely performed by Frank Barrie. Though too tall for Coward, and not at all similar-looking, Barrie provides the right amount of Cowardly voice and manner to evoke the most self-conscious persona in British playwriting since the glory days of Oscar Wilde.
Yet it’s Kate O’Mara’s Marlene that grabs the emotional jugular, through the restrained expression of anxiety. She’s someone for whom iconic status has become a burden – how can she not live in a Mayfair penthouse? Arriving in a ‘disguise’ of self-advertising dark-glasses and wide-brimmed hat, O’Mara slowly reveals the shadow beneath the star’s spotlit surface.
After the interval, the CD – the Coward/Dietrich cabaret that never was, though each filled out their separate later years with cabaret shows. It’s beautifully done by Barrie, while O’Mara suggests the purring, suggestive vocal mannerisms through which Dietrich disguised her limitations as a singer.
It was old people’s stuff, to have happened in the rock ‘n’ roll years: sentimental artificiality, with fawning applause greeting a mere phrase of a recognised song. And the whole experience is fondly caught in this accomplished show.
Noel Coward: Frank Barrie.
Waiter: Neil McDonald.
Marlene Dietrich: Kate O’Mara.
Director/Musical Staging: Chris Nicholls.
Designer/Costume: Lotte Collett.
Lighting: David W Kidd.
Sound: Mark Dunne.
Musical Director/Arranger: Neil McDonald.
2008-03-31 10:04:32