SAILOR BEWARE: till 19 July

Northampton/Swansea

SAILOR, BEWARE!
by Philip King and Falkland Cary

Ian Dickens Productions at Royal Theatre To 5 July 2003
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu & Sat 2.30pm
then Grand Theatre Swansea 15-19 July 2003
Runs 2hr 40min One interval

TICKETS: 01604 624811 (Northampton)
Review Timothy Ramsden 1 July

A lumbering evening: by the interval I'd lost all interest in theatre. Before the end I was struggling with the will to live.
It needn't have been like this. King and Cary's mid-fifties play may not be a classic comedy, but it's a classy enough period piece. It can be valued as a n expression of its times, a measure for how ways and attitudes have changed. But not when the whole thing's presented with the two-dimensional deadness of a saucy seaside postcard.

Emma Hornett may be a dragon, but as her husband Henry says, she keeps a tidy home and always has his tea on the table not just fish and chips while she's traipsing off to the films. Everyone in it may be ordered about, but her house is orderly; none of the dirt in a lot of homes along the street.

Emma may disapprove of her prospective sailor son-in-law, but it's out of love for her daughter. There's room to show the pride and effort made by this comic monster, as there is to find a touching edge to her relation with a husband who hides from her protective aggression in peaceful retirement with his ferrets.

And there's something in her support for the incompetent Edie, who's herself more than the comic turn she becomes in this production.

There's so much bad acting, it takes time to realise these aren't bad actors. They're good actors doing their worst day's work for many a year. Lucinda Curtis or Michael Tudor Barnes might not always set the stage alight, but they don't dowse it as happens here. Samantha Douglas (stepping in for the originally-planned Ruth Madoc) shows a command of tine and timing that bespeak capability far beyond the resulting performance.

No point can be made without arms emphasisingly sawing the air; every action sets off the most predictable facial reaction there's mugging galore. Jo Castleton has the expressive range of a game-show host's bimbo on auto-pilot; Katharine Monaghan who suggests a nascent temper inherited from mother and an accent descended from father (there's an interesting range of family voices) has little to do but simper and scream.

Non-family members fare slightly better, but the overall prospect's dull and heavy.

Edie Hornett: Lucinda Curtis
Emma Hornett: Samantha Douglas
Mrs Lack: Jennifer Marriott
Henry Hornett: Michael Tudor Barnes
Albert Tufnell: Christopher Hackett
Carnoustie Bligh: George Telfer
Daphne Pink: Jo Castleton
Shirley Hornett: Katharine Monaghan
Rev. Oliver Purefoy: Patric Kearns

Director: Ian Dickens
Designers: David North, Alan Miller Bunford
Lighting: Christian Knighton

2003-07-08 21:41:15