OUR SONG. To 31 May.
Tour
OUR SONG
by Keith Waterhouse
Tour to 31 May 2003
Runs: 2hr One interval
TICKETS: 020 8940 0088 (Richmond)
www.theambassadors.com/richmond
Review: Emma Dunford 31 March at Richmond Theatre (To 5 April)
You'll feel pity and pathos - plus uncontrollable laughter.
Our Song is hilarious but profound, witty but compassionate. You'll feel pity and maybe even shed a tear or two. It's likely you'll be laughing out loud too.
Waterhouse explores the conflict between romantic and sexual fulfilment and shows that when love outdoes lust (or the other way around) dynamics shift to recreate a level playing field. Within marriage or infidelity, a partner experiences the nuances of love and sex but rarely knows where they truly stand, or what the future holds.
This sounds depressing, and there is a dark side to the play. But it's comedy that makes this contemporary tragic-love story so entertaining. The protagonist, Roger Piper, has the ability to laugh at himself, and everyone else laughs with him.
The ever-dextrous Peter Bowles plays with abounding rhetorical confidence - grasping attention and sympathies, even when his character behaves like a complete twit.
Roger is 50+ husband of celebrity chef Judith Piper and lover to twenty-five year old it-girl Angela Caxton. Telling the story of his time with Angie through moments of soliloquy, he wittingly but wretchedly illustrates the bureaucratic planning that goes into an affair and the exasperating effect it has on you before, during and, most importantly, afterwards.
The set is functionally efficient. Bedroom and kitchen, bar and hotel room, all cream with the neutrality of inconstancy it doesn't matter where or when, or even with whom an affair takes place: all end the same way
Bowles is supported by a good cast as his lover, Charlotte Emmerson's slightly wooden, yet her lethargy-tinged performance reflects the bored frustration of being lover to a man who doesn't leave his wife.
Caroline Langrishe's wife gains laughs through a different kind of frustration - at a husband she knows to be playing the field. Her witty throw away lines illustrate her enforced position as a wife tolerating her husband's affair to maintain her name.
'Our Song' is a title evoking the idea that all couples possess something that makes their relationship unique. Yet Our Song shows this is ultimately untrue. A dark maxim but a great night's entertainment.
Roger Piper: Peter Bowles
Judith Piper: Caroline Langrishe
Angela Caxton: Charlotte Emmerson
Charles: David Firth
Gunby T. Gunby: Rupert Baker
Maitre D': James Pearce
Director: Ned Sherrin
Designer: Tim Goodchild
2003-04-03 01:05:04