RABBIT. To 7 October.

London

RABBIT
by Nina Raine

Old Red Lion Theatre 418 St John Street EC1 To 10 June 2006
Tue-Sat 8pm Sun 6pm Mat Sat 3.30pm
Runs 2hr One interval

TICKETS: 020 7837 7816/08700 600100
www.oldredliontheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 4 June

Now (with some cast changes) at

Trafalgar Studios (Studio 2) To 7 October 2006
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Wed & Sat 3pm

TICKETS: 0870060 6632
www.theambassadors.com/trafalgarstudios

Well worth catching Bella on her beautiful night.
It’s Bella’s 29th birthday bash, in a smart bar where the barmen recommend lousy wine and anyone, including an ex-boyfriend, might be around. But the glittering surface of friends invited or just happening to be there, the freedom and threat of easy cellphone communication, the brittle clashes melt into a darker mood.

For around these sparky conversation scenes are scenes, some recent, some years back, showing Bella with her father in his several moods. And his presence snakes into Bella’s mind, for all her attempts to deny his imminent death in the celebration that marks a kind of death of youth for her (“I’ll never be 28 again,” she says, knowing what’s coming next year).

For thought of death stops the fun, silencing her friends’ talk, their sex battles and ambitions, affluent success and glittering wit. As Bella’s doctor-friend Emily confirms, when it comes to mortality everyone reverts to the usual clichés.

There’s nothing new to the play’s mix of hedonism and gravity, outer gaiety and inward misery, while the mingling of life and death is as old as literature, and probably as the human brain. But there’s a particular skill to this play, in the balance Nina Raine gives the moods of life and death, and the mix of right and wrong, silliness and sense in her characters.

There’s a joy too in the natural-seeming unfolding of information. Lucy Everett and Rocky Marshall, playing the quietest of the young characters, make their respective ‘position-statement’ speeches on human memory and male sexual jealousy arise naturally within the scene.

Raine’s also a practised director who deals with her own play scrupulously (it’s no surprise she was director and dramaturg of Liverpool Everyman’s recent Unprotected which gave piercing life to downbeat documentary material). Bella’s detachment, at times physical, at others emotional, her move from the party’s mellow light to the cold white with her father, are matched by the fine-detailed acting of Charlotte Randle and Hilton McRae. But this whole cast, like the play, are so fine it’s impossible to believe this production will really end in a week’s time.

Bella: Charlotte Randle
Father: Hilton McRae
Emily: Ruth Everett
Tom: Rocky Marshall
Richard: Adam James
Sandy: Susannah Wise

Director: Nina Raine
Designer: Jaimie Todd
Lighting: Colin Grenfell
Sound: Fergus O’Hare

2006-06-05 09:26:54