MAKING TIME. Old Red Lion to 2 March.

London

MAKING TIME
by Lance Nielsen

Gutted Film & Theatre Company at the Old Red Lion Theatre To 2 March 2002
Runs 1hr 25min No interval

TICKETS 020 7837 7816
Review Timothy Ramsden 17 February

A writer with promise could benefit from a separate director.Lance Nielsen's setting out down the Alan Ayckbourn road of theatre craftiness. Young Ayckbourn amazed with his clever dovetailing of two rooms into one action, or one action into three rooms over three plays. Nielsen plays with casting; his script's alternately performed by a male and female cast. Not a name, not a word of dialogue is altered. Only the film posters on the wall of David Ilari's set change – action pics. for the men, romances for the women.

The story follows three friends through young and middle adult life, between two funerals and with, yes, a wedding offstage. They meet up with increasing difficulty, but never find that joint window to make it to Alton Towers. Not till the death of one of their number finally has them fling caution to the wind.

If only someone had flung it sooner. When this trio meet, they talk. Of course. And talk. In Nielsen's own production they do little more than sit and talk. As a means of providing entertainment, this is going to need vibrant acting. The cast I saw acted indifferently, with one performance virtually disappearing up its own ill-projected somnolence.

What roused the audience momentarily was a sudden spurt into action and wit, with a bravura account of marriage as a horse-race. The cast could do with more such from their writer/director.

I think I'd back Nielsen more as a writer. Though dialogue in early scenes erred towards over-formality, characters speaking as if in written sentences, Nielsen has a sense of dramatic structure. He needs to have his people doing things; a play almost entirely in retailing past activities is difficult ground.

Nielsen ends with another experiment – the dead character leaves a video for their friends. It's new each night and the remaining actors only see it along with us, having to improvise a response. Yes, very interesting. But. It needs more experience, skill or, dare it be said of improvisation? – rehearsal - to avoid the drop in dramatic temperature that followed as the two performers groped towards their final scene.

Confi: Ray Bullock Jnr/Sarah Reeves
Koocha: Alex Heaton/Ritzy Richards
Moped: Mo Nazam/Louise morell/Fiona Murphy

Director: Lance Nielsen
Designer: David Ilari

2002-02-20 00:41:54