OTHERWISE ENGAGED.
London
OTHERWISE ENGAGED
by Simon Gray
Criterion Theatre
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu & Sat 3pm
Runs 2hr One interval
TICKETS: 0870 060 2313 (no booking fee)
www.otherwise.biz
Review: Timothy Ramsden 1 November
Stasis of cultured mid-70s London affluence viewed a generation on.
Central to Simon Gray’s 1975 play is publisher Simon Hench, who appears to have everything modern affluence allows. Yet he wishes only to listen to his new recording of Wagner’s Parsifal, famously slow-moving and written to demand total absorption in its medieval world of spiritual grace - something modern life doesn’t allow as Simon’s doorbell keeps ringing. There’s the crass student lodger on a peppercorn rent, the anxious brother feeling a perpetual failure, voluble literary voice Jeff with his latest opportunistic lay Davina, who contrives a topless display to get her book published. They’re followed by a fellow-pupil from public school days, and finally Simon's wife.
As they parade their neuroses and concerns, Simon’s patience is tested, while his tolerant detachment begins to seem evasion. Awful though he is, ultra-thick lodger Dave has his landlord nailed as a conscience-saving do-gooder letting his spare space dirt cheap to one of the less fortunate. About the only standard Simon eventually maintains is the professional one of a publisher, not allowing the proximate dangling of Davina’s bared breasts to lure him into a contract. In real relationships he’s a non-starter. Irony wards off feeling and commitment.
Or it did when the late Alan Bates created the role (incidentally, a re-viewing brings to notice a reference to material that would become The Rear Column, Gray’s sole historical, and most unappreciated, play). Richard E Grant substitutes a series of increasingly pained smiles and grimaces. There’s limited sense of what lies behind, the ambiguity Bates suggested over Hench’s position between ironic wisdom and cowardly escapism. Several performances show capable directness or struggle to master the language’s dramatic sweep. Yet David Bamber’s eternal failure has a restraint only partly vitiated by an initial tendency towards mannerism, and Peter Wight catches Stephen’s misery-bearing sense of personal failure.
Best is Amanda Drew’s wife, injecting genuine feeling and a wish to communicate, a standard by which her husband fails. But that’s the last scene, which cannot alone lift a decent revival, firmly directed but missing the finely balanced performances that would give this glacially-surfaced comedy its heart and full identity.
Simon: Richard E Grant
Dave: Liam Garrigan
Stephen: Peter Wight
Jeff: Anthony Head
Davina: Amanda Ryan
Wood: David Bamber
Beth: Amanda Drew
Director: Simon Curtis
Designer: Simon Higlett
Lighting: Tim Mitchell
Sound: Clement Rawling
Assistant director: Katie McAleese
2005-11-03 08:22:13