MARY GOES FIRST. To 31 January.
Richmond.
MARY GOES FIRST
by Henry Arthur Jones.
Orange Tree Theatre To 31 January 2009.
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Sat 4pm & 8, 15 Jan (+ post-show discussion).
Audio-described 6 Jan, 10 Jan 4pm.
Runs 2hr 20min One interval.
TICKETS: 020 8940 3633.
www.orangetreetheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 2 January.
Another delightful Orange Tree rediscovery – though all is not froth.
Poor Lady Bodsworth. Suddenly elevated to the top of Northern industrial town Warkington society, she’s used her new title to get one over on Mary Whichello. Insult’s added to injury when Mary’s host that evening insists on partnering Lady B in first to dine. Mary proceeds to use her sharp wit to repeatedly undermine her rival’s egregious pomposities.
There’s no doubt where audience sympathies lie in the threatened lawsuit that results. Putter-down always wins over the down-put on stage. And Susie Trayling’s trim-figured Mary has an intelligence which leaves Claire Carrie’s slower-witted character confounded, her ornate dress and hair looking pathetically pretentious.
Yet Mary is just as socially ambitious, equally willing to use her husband’s wealth to buy a title. She forces Whichello, who Michael Lumsden makes clear only wishes to be left to play golf, into a parliamentary election. When he fails her, it’s clear who’d make the best candidate. But 1913 was early for women MPs, so it falls to lawyer Felix Galpin, a smiling opportunist, out to make a political fortune through whichever party will most quickly provide it.
Mary is dramatically attractive and Trayling gives her a willowy sinuousness, yet shows her bright confidence slipping as the courtroom looms. The play lets her off the hook through the device of leaked information. But the image of a playground bully, manipulative and self-promoting, shadows Mary’s bright liveliness (with Lady B the one left weeping and humiliated like a pudding in the corner).
Similarly the comedy of northern moneyed men led up the mountainside of local society by their wives, and lawyers inspiring confidence by seeming, like James Woolley’s Tadman, pillars of rectitude as they connive to win their case, overlays the serious matter of corrupted municipal life, the self-interest of the wealthy determining what facilities Warkingtonians will enjoy or miss.
Auriol Smith’s highly enjoyable revival, splendidly played all round on a set where regular designer Sam Dowson ingeniously creates a period sense, allows glimpses of darker matters while respecting the play’s conclusion, where female rivalry, in the spirit of pantomime song-contests, ends with both sides surprisingly equal.
Dakin: David Whitworth.
Dr Chesher: Timothy Carlton.
Felix Galpin: Damien Matthews.
Ella Southwood: Mia Austen.
Lady Bodsworth: Claire Carrie.
Sir Thomas Bodsworth: Philip York.
Mrs Tadman: Penelope Beaumont.
Mr Tadman: James Woolley.
Mary Whichello: Susie Trayling.
Richard Whichello: Michael Lumsden.
Harvey Betts: Christopher Naylor.
Pollard: Mark Burrell.
Director: Auriol Smith.
Designer: Sam Dowson.
Lighting: John Harris.
Costume: Jude Stedham.
Assistant director: David Siebert.
2009-01-06 02:06:31