RING ROUND THE MOON.
London.
RING ROUND THE MOON
by Jean Anouilh adapted by Christopher Fry.
Playhouse Theatre.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed & Sat 2.30pm
Runs 2hr 40min Two intervals.
TICKETS: 0870 060 6631 (£3 transaction fee)
www.TheAmbassadors.org
Review: Timothy Ramsden 20 February.
Elegant concoction of a trifle light as air.
Sean Mathias directs a cluster of fine actors in this comedy of elegantly elongated emptiness. With a freewheeling approach to time, Mathias takes the action from the 20th-century’s opening years, where Jean Anouilh placed it when writing in 1947, and plonks it in the early-1950s, the Christian Dior era, on the grounds they still had nice frocks then (and they didn’t half-a-century before?).
But not very nice conservatories, going by Colin Richmond’s set. Eventually most of the lights studding the walls are working, though they give little warmth to the brutalist colouring. There’s a wonky lintel. And the apparently exterior staircase to the bedrooms runs perilously close to the wall.
Or conveniently close, when Mathias wants someone to be peeking-in from the steps. Without any apparent stylisation, the set seems chucked together for momentary opportunities - though the neutral colouring acts as setting for the sleek and colourful frocks (the director’s right about those). And for some glitteringly characterful performances by both types of people in the play.
There are the wanderers, like the young ballet dancer’s mum. Belinda Lang’s wide, lipsticked smile of inane pleasure at events goes with her inept curiosity and constant happy gabble in a beautifully-presented performance that suggests inanity can produce a blissful ignorance - especially when she's re-united with Joanna David’s dowdily contented servant Capulat.
And there are the indomitables, from wheelchair-bound Madame Desmortes (Angela Thorne commandingly economic in immobilised authority) to Peter Eyre’s butler, comically forceful in a performance suggesting years of dogged service reinforcing a gloomy temperament.
Among these move wilful young women, given admirable vigour and purpose by Emily Bruni and Elisabeth Dermot Walsh. And less certain men, John Ramm’s perpetual suitor Romainville and Leigh Lawson’s Germanic (hence, rougher-mannered) Messerschmann, who carries a whiff of Heartbreak House’s Boss Mangan.
Uniting both types is J J Field as nice twin-brother Frederic and nasty, but more interesting brother Hugo. His intrigues have little point, but Field carries the pairing off neatly enough, despite Hugo’s mannerisms – entering as if ice-skating everywhere, and pointing a not-quite-straight arm as if casting a spell – becoming a touch effortful.
Lady India: Emily Bruni.
Isabelle: Fiona Button.
Capulat: Joanna David.
Diana: Elisabeth Dermot Walsh.
Joshua: Peter Eyre.
Hugo/Frederic: J J Field.
Patrice: Andrew Havill.
Mother: Belinda Lang.
Messerschmann: Leigh Lawson.
Romainville: John Ramm.
Madame Desmortes: Angela Thorne.
General: Paul Aves.
Director: Sean Mathias.
Designer/Costume: Colin Richmond.
Lighting: Mark Henderson.
Sound: Gregory Clarke.
Composer: Jason Carr.
Movement: Watyne McGregor.
Fight director: Terry King.
Assistant director: Meriel Baistow Claire.
2008-02-25 11:43:33