SEX & POWER AT THE BEAU RIVAGE. To 17 April.

Mold

SEX & POWER AT THE BEAU RIVAGE
by Lewis Davies

Theatr Y Byd at Clwyd Theatr Cymru (Emlyn Williams Theatre) To 17 April 2003
Thu 7.45pm
Runs 2hr One interval

TICKETS 0845 330 3565
www.clwyd-theatr-cymru.co.uk
Review Timothy Ramsden 16 April

Colourful lives on a colourful set, but with monochrome performances.This is a pleasant meander through possible scenes in late 1920s south of France when young gay writer Rhys Davies nervously enters the cauldron of passions between the dying D.H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda. Lawrence had invited the, then, newly-published fiction writer to be their guest in the title hotel. The play Lewis Davies has formed from this event would be more involving if the qualities in the title more thoroughly permeated production and performances.

Brendan Charleson's Lawrence gives some sense of the writer's passion, but seems afflicted by bad-temper rising from physical rather than temperamental rage: dyspeptic rather than fury-driven. In an unconvincing post-death scene the two men meet and refer to sex and power. But that's where it's stayed throughout – reference, not dissection.

Morgan Rhys cuts a diffident figure, buttoned-up by the Mediterranean in a tweedy suit, a figure of Welsh sexual reticence seeking a master writer in a place where he is, himself, right out of place. Still, the sun's shining and by the interval he's started chatting to Mr Lawrence about his love for a lost young man and set off skinny-dipping with Mrs Lawrence.

But this doesn't take us far into Davies' mind or feelings. The second act, which sees off Lawrence in coughing fits which have you worrying over the state of Charleson's larynx, is peremptory. It's brevity after the more extended pre-interval build-up suggests a lack of anywhere much for the play to go.

Martina Messing catches a certain foreignness to contrast the men. But there's little of the fire in her Frieda. Her temperament comes over simply as tetchy moments, always with a sense of keeping up polite appearances before the guest. And, fatally, it's possible to see the technique – the face setting in irritated mode – destroying the character's spontaneous-combustion power or sexuality.

James North provides Lawrentian colour-splashes across the stage (though there's some realism-induced, painfully slow changing of window-blinds). Rhys Davies arrives to find Lawrence's painted nude of Frieda. There's interesting material in Lewis Davies' script, but like the painting it remains distant and static in this over-tepid production.

Rhys Davies: Morgan Rhys
D.H. Lawrence: Brendan Charleson
Frieda Lawrence: Martina Messing

Director: Chris Morgan
Designer: James North
Lighting: Chris Illingworth

2003-04-19 12:17:08