Quartermain's Terms to 1st November 2003

Quartermain's Terms
by Simon Gray

Salisbury Playhouse, 9th October 2003 to 1st November 2003
Mons-Weds; 7.30 pm; Thur Sat; 8.00 p.m.

Runs 2 hours 17 minutes: One Interval

Tickets 01722 320333: http://www.salisburyplayhouse.com

Review Mark Courtice: 28th October 2003

Dutiful production fails to make the case for a new millennium revival of Gray's 60's set 80's play.
Quartermain, charming and always reliable as a baby sitter, sits in the staff room of a language school in Cambridge. The place has pretensions, as do his colleagues, wandering round him. They want to be academics, artists, and lovers. Busy struggling to fulfil these dreams, they all carefully ignore the Quartermain's descent into the incomprehension and disassociation of some sort of dementia.

This play seems consciously to strive for Chekhov's cunning blend of comedy and tragedy (indeed one of Quartermain's abortive staff treats is a visit to a Chekhov play). Gray's version of the cherry orchard is the croquet lawn, and Quartermain, eventually declared surplus to requirements, his Firs. Not much else in this unsubtle mix reminds us of Chekhov's ironic mastery of the political and personal, the immediate and the timeless.

This production plays to the worst of the script. The bad joke about a new member of staff splitting his pants is made worse by spotted underwear; a mention of any Northern town is good for a lazy laugh in Gray's book, compounded here by an over-broad Yorkshire accent. Everything is very static, the direction often petrifying actors into semi circular dispositions for what seemed like hours as they talk out at the audience. Quartermain is anchored to a chair downstage centre.

The performances are safe, competent and dull. For some, the temptation to broaden the comedy leads to some wrong decisions, like the steadily more bizarre facial hair of Josh Cohen's Mark. Rupert Wickham invests the thoroughly decent Quartermain with little more than thorough decency, although he does look great in a dinner jacket.

David Farley's set is full of careful detail, but even he cannot avoid the broad brush; the Green Lady was a cliché even in 1960, and this pretentious gang (especially) would have known it.

Why we should care about these people? Why does the world they lived in have any relevance to us now? These are questions left unanswered by this dutiful revival of a piece of the past best left undisturbed.

St. John Quartermain: Rupert Wickham
Anita Minchip: Sophie Shaw
Mark Sackling: Josh Cohen
Eddie Loomis: Ian Price
Derek Meadle: Jonas Armstrong
Henry Windscape: Timothy Davies
Melanie Garth: Marty Cruickshank

Director: Simon Godwin
Designer: David Farley
Lighting Designer: Paul Dennant

2003-11-07 15:09:23