MRS PAT. To 1 April.

York

MRS PAT
by Pam Gems

Theatre Royal To 1 April 2006
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu 2pm Sat 2.30pm
Audio-described 30 March 7.30pm 1 April 2.30pm
BSL Signed 30 March 7.30pm
Captioned 25 March 2.30pm
Runs 2hr 20min One interval

TICKETS: 01904 623568
www.yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 15 March

The woman with a past treads the boards with increasing certainty.
Stella Tanner was the lioness of England’s late Victoiran and Edwardian stage. Pursued by George Bernard Shaw, she was finally tempted by the role of Eliza Doolittle into a stormy match of equal yet opposite temperaments; a theatrical partnership that was most certainly not bloody likely.

Pam Gems’ bioplay of Stella refreshes Eliza’s famous phrase as an act-one curtain line. Until then, there’s been little illuminating in Gems’ script. The film-set frame (Stella failed in cinema) is unhelpful. And this monster temperament needs others to battle against; by allowing Mrs Pat to explain her side unchallenged till Shaw appears (other opposition vapourises before her ego) Gems wastes her fragmented journey through late Victorian theatre.

Stella used her married name, Mrs Patrick Campbell, till her death in 1940. Her husband, and deepest love, had died 40 years earlier in the Boer War. He’s inadequately dealt with here as a soldier waving farewell, followed by a telegram and accumulations of grief, making Coward’s Cavalcade seem a work of historical analysis.

Sue Dunderdale’s production doesn’t help in the rush of early scenes. Nor does a woefully underpowered supporting cast (Phillip Joseph’s Shaw apart). The point several rehearsal scenes make (apart from the leading lady’s have-‘em-for-breakfast approach to opposition) is that Mrs Pat injected fresh reality into an artificial performance style. When your actors can’t manage that old style, the point is lost.

Thankfully, things settle down. Mrs Pat’s masterclass for American theatre students is engrossing. Answering student questions, Mrs Campbell radiates generosity of spirit about her art. Her insistence on actors looking out to the world and observing parallels the method Stanislavsky was teaching at the time in Russia.

Dunderdale’s production grows richer as Mrs Pat’s fame, wealth and fabulous beauty decline into age and poverty. And the more the play relies on Isla Blair’s Mrs Pat the better it seems; it’s unsurprising to learn it started as a 45-minute one-person show. Though Gems gives her heroine a dying so extended as to make Bottom’s Pyramus model of concision, Blair handles it beautifully, amid Richard Taylor’s haunting ‘cello melodies and Tina MacHugh’s warmly sympathetic lighting.

Mrs Patrick Campbell: Isla Blair
Shaw/Pinero/Burne-Jones/The Bey: Phillip Joseph
George Alexander/Johnstone Forbes-Robertson/George Cornwallis-West/Van Orff/John Gielgud/James McEwan: Ifan Meredith
Leif/Patrick Campbell/Stage Manager/Hall Caine/Mr Jardine/American Student/Guido: Joseph Raishbrook
Dione/Young Stella/Sarah Bernhardt/Wardrobe Mistress/American Student/Ellean: Karina Fernandez
Lady Burne-Jones/Miss Whittall/’Cellist: Rebecca Jenkins

Director: Sue Dunderdale
Designer: Norman Coates
Lighting: Tina MacHugh
Composer: Richard Taylor
Voice coach: Susan Stern

2006-03-16 11:59:38