SAY IT WITH FLOWERS To 1 August.
Hull.
SAY IT WITH FLOWERS
by Jane Thornton.
Hull Truck Theatre To 1 August 2009.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 22 July, 1 Aug 2pm.
BSL Signed 24 July.
Post-show discussion 21 July.
Runs 2hr 30min One interval.
TICKETS: 01482 323638.
www.hulltruck.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 11 July.
Recognisable characters don’t gain their independence.
It started with a Godber in April, and already Hull Truck’s new home seems established. This short opening season ends by keeping it in the family, with Mrs Godber’s new play. Nepotism? Not a bit; there was always dramatic sympathy between John Godber, Hull Truck’s Creative Director, no less, and Jane Thornton, Shaker to his Bouncer.
Just as Hull Truck’s much-loved old shack fitted its site, in a sawn-off side-street, its backyard car-park a short walk away, this gleaming building rightly sits with its distinctive red sign on Ferensway, conveniently next to a multi-storey car-park.
What happens onstage inSay It With Flowers, with its backyard patio setting, enclosed despite its gate to the street and way through to next door, has a look of Alan Ayckbourn to it. And like several Ayckbourn plays Thornton’s focuses on people apparently united in an amateur operatic society. But just as Scarborough is to Hull, so is the Godbers’ world to Ayckbourn’s; these people are a couple of notches down the social ladder.
They speak their mind without the restraint of inbuilt politeness and the irony resulting from that when, as here, and in many an Ayckbourn, a marriage goes awry. Not suddenly – though there is a surprise discovery – but through years of a relationship suffered by one party, and with no self-realisation by the other.
These people aren’t rude, stupid, or inarticulate, but blunt when the surface gets scratched. And unready to deal with the semi-socialised younger woman who’s moved in next door. Yet she’s all right in her way, merely from a more casual generation. And in the doubling of young Rio with posh, obnoxiously condescending Vicky the point’s made that class and quality don’t go hand-in-hand.
What’s said with flowers isn’t all roses. Though she understands her people Thornton is painfully slow at developing them. Everything is too deliberate also in another sense. There’s no subtlety or shading; every sentence seems the playwright’s deliberate announcement, so the characters lack a sense of independence. Godber’s directing style emphasises this, while also producing the most unconvincingly stereotyped gay character of the 21st-century stage.
Mavis: Annie Sawle.
Stan: Dicken Ashworth.
Vera: Jacqueline Pilton.
Rich: James Jornsby.
Rio/Vicky: Claire Eden.
Director: John Godber.
Designer: Pip Leckenby.
Lighting: Graham Kirk.
Composer: Stuart Briner.
2009-07-14 11:55:00