NOEL & GERTIE by Sheridan Morley. Salisbury/Westcliffe-on-Sea to 19 January.

Salisbury/Westcliffe-on-Sea

NOEL & GERTIE
by Sheridan Morley

Salberg Studio, Salisbury Playhouse To 12 January 2002, then Dixon Studio, Palace Theatre Westcliffe-on-Sea to 19 January.
Runs 2hr 25min One interval

TICKETS 01722 320333 (Salisbury)
01702 342564 (Westcliffe)
Review Timothy Ramsden 2 January

Pleasantly undemanding scissors-and-paste job on dramatist Noel Coward and leading lady Gertrude Lawrence.There aren't many links between the National's mighty Olivier Theatre and Salisbury's petite Salberg studio, but there's one just now. Gertrude Lawrence, mighty talent, and temperament, of between-wars West End and Broadway, went on to create the part of Anna Leonowens, the eponymous pronoun in the Broadway premiere of The King and I, by Rodgers and Hammerstein, whose South Pacific occupies the Olivier until April.

Sheridan Morley wields the scrapbook efficiently but there are times it would be interesting to have some insights behind the safety curtains of the pair's personas. For instance, when Coward sent Gertie the script of Private Lives, in which they were to star, she replied there was nothing that could not be fixed. The rebarbative writer cabled that the only thing to need fixing would be her performance. Sweet as could be, Gertie retorted that by fixing things she meant merely her availability.

Really? Or was she teasing him? Did she see problems with the play? Instead of comment we are served up huge chunks of Private Lives, presumably for its fond familiarity, and of the essential two-handers Coward wrote for Gertie and himself under the umbrella title Tonight at 8.30.

When mere actors play stage immortals they tend less to incarnate than incarcerate them. Yet if Bradshaw and Goode don't seem like short-fused dynamite threatening to explode any moment, they bring English drama's other great balcony scene to adequate life. And, in the Tonight extracts, they have a fine fluency as music hall duo the Red Peppers and a welcome lack of mush in Still Life, the stage original of Brief Encounter.

Of course this is Noel on Gertie much more than Gertie on Noel. By the interval Morley's run through their meetings, which is a shame because the second act material covers an interesting period when the world, and theatre, had moved on from their heyday.

For Salisbury this is pretty much a late-night show. The 8.45 start allows a starter and main course meal, with an interval dessert. Well-judged, it all slips down very pleasantly.

Gertie: Lucy Bradshaw
Noel: Daniel Goode

Director: Douglas Rintoul
Designer: Karen McKeown
Lighting: Peter Hunter
Musical Director: Jane Marlow
Choreographer: Vicki Charlton

2002-01-15 15:40:45