MASKS & FACES. To 1 May.
London
MASKS & FACES
by Charles Reade and Tom Taylor
Finborough Theatre To 1 May 2004
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Sun 3.30pm
Runs 2hr 20min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7373 3842
www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 8 April
Rare opportunity to catch a 19th century theatrical view of the 18th century theatre, in an unrefined production that makes the major points.Little changes; here's a 19th century view of 18th century theatre types as self-absorbed as the modern media-types in Ben Elton's Popcorn. It's a hostage to critical fortune (and given the caricature critics Snarl and Soaper, the company should know to take care) that this revival of an 1852 London hit, set partly in Covent Garden Theatre a century or so earlier, comes from an outfit called Penny Dreadful cheap and nasty, so to speak.
Here's an evocation of the roustabout post-Restoration theatre, not yet kow-towed by 18th century respectability. But this Reade-Taylor drama mixes a healthy appreciation of Restoration backbiting with early Victorian sentimentality. Think Wycherley re-imagined by Dickens.
The production's a brave, vigorous attempt, but a piece about theatre even backstage needs more than the raw technique most of this company manage. Charlotte Pyke is good enough as Peg, though in this company of screaming and declaiming on one hand and underplaying to the point of inaudible endings on the other, she shines out like the star ex-orange-seller Peg became (Nell Gwyn wasn't alone on that ladder).
The most blatant comic/moral device, in which star actress Peg Woffington cuts a hole in a portrait of herself and sticks her head through to listen in, first to experts' decrying the unlikeness, then to heartfelt sentiments, loses out twice: Chekhov used the idea to point up the difference between reality and artistic realism, while on the tiny in-the-round stage the device seems plain ludicrous.
Catherine Hayes is the star's helpless, country wife opposite, married to Peg's suitor and eventual beneficiary of her help as is struggling playwright Triplet (a profession at whose expense there's much fun in these two dramatists' script). His family, starving kids and all, are recipients of Peg's help as her veneer of brittle glitter rubs away to reveal the soft surface of a Victorian Lady Bountiful. These writers knew what pleased the Pit as well as their onstage forebears.
A major repertory company, or the National, could show this loving slice of theatre history to far greater advantage. But none has done so and this young company at least gives it a go, and all - however much or little that is - they've got.
Betty/Mrs Triplet: Victoria Gilmon
Kitty Clive/Roxalana Triplet: Bea Holland
Colley Cibber/Colander: Simon Coleman
Snarl/James Burdock: Andrew Michell
Soaper/Hundsdon: Ian Groombridge
Sir Charles Pomander/Lysimachus Triplet: Thomas Power
Ernest Vane: Asa Joel
Triplet: Jonathan Lisle
Peg Woffington: Charlotte Pyke
Mabel: Catherine Hayes
Director: Caitriona McLaughlin
Designer: Cordelia Chisholm
Lighting: Alex Watson
2004-04-09 01:21:52