OLD WORLD Touring
OLD WORLD
by Alexei Arbusov
Tour to
Runs 2hr 5min One interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 24 June at Royal Theatre Northampton
Gentle predictability from the Soviet boulevards.
As a two-hander, this old Arbusov play has an economic case for revival (it would be interesting to see his larger-scale It Happened in Irkutsk some time).
Here we have Arbusov giving us the Soviet version of a boulevard comedy. No collectivised conscience here, no post-Stalinist trauma. A few PC remarks Soviet 60s style about young Rodion having fought for the Reds against the Whites in the early days of Bolshevik rule, a hostile comment from Lidya about Russia's partial return to Capitalism in the 1920s the New Economic Policy. All the rest lightly salted with humour - is melancholy memory of private life, abandoned love and seed-cake at the patisserie.
Lidya's sorting out her ageing arteries at the health resort presided over by Dr Rodion. The scenes predictably begin with a clash between his order official form and pen before him and her disorder, as she flutters up to him out of hours. A couple of hours later, we're meant to be weeping at her impending departure.
It's a slow, gentle play. Early in a lengthy tour, both actors have moments grappling for words, but the performances are distinctive. Angela Thorne initially offers a kind of self-conscious eccentricity, parking herself precisely in a chair, then landing her bag carefully on the ground, turning up next in a self-announcing turban. Increasingly a working-woman's voice and manner come through. She's had rough experiences, with her husband, in the circus of life and life of the circus.
It's nothing to the melancholy of his memory-bound existence: flowers on the long-dead wife's grave, a tetchy loneliness now reaching the brink of retirement. Of course, beneath the inevitable irritabilities they're made for each other, and a sentimentally happy end.
Britton's a fine actor, using a deep, resonant voice without exploiting it for flashy effect. Both actors, along with director Christopher Morahan, restrain the sentiment that just waits to gush through any production tricks.
An elderly play, in more than one way, if it had been American, about two oldsters, Rod and Lydia, it would have become a Hollywood film with a couple of veteran stars. Here, it's well-performed by fine actors, but the dramatic texture's thin.
Rodion Nikolayevich: Tony Britton
Lidya Vasilyevna: Angela Thorne
Director: Christopher Morahan
Designer: Julie Godfrey
Lighting: Oliver Fenwick
Sound: Clement Rawling
Music: Ilona sekacz
Choreographer: Gerry Tebbutt
2003-06-28 09:59:30