SING TO ME THROUGH OPEN WINDOWS/THE PRIVATE EAR To 20 June.
Richmond.
SING TO ME THROUGH OPEN WINDOWS and THE PRIVATE EAR
by Arthur Kopit by Peter Shaffer.
Orange Tree Theatre To 20 June 2009.
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Sat 3pm & 9, 16 June 2.30pm (+ post-show discussion).
Audio-described 9 June7.45pm 13 June 3pm.
Runs 2hr 45min One interval.
TICKETS: 020 8940 3633.
www.orangetreetheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 6 June.
A finely-contrasted double-bill of equally fine productions.
Andy Brunskill’s is the tougher assignment in this double-bill from the Orange Tree’s young directors. Arthur Kopit’s atmospheric 1959 play is astonishingly sophisticated for a playwright still in his early twenties. The Absurdist surface – old magician in freezing room attended by clown, while receiving the annual visit of a boy coming up towards his teens – may be common for the period. And the memory framework has clear forebears
But the use of implication, the suggestion of inevitable, inexplicable and inexpressible loss is finely achieved through a spare script, some comic action and a mood mixing the everyday and the elegiac. Ashley George conveys young Andrew’s puzzlement as the magician Ottoman’s tricks no longer impress. Alongside his loss of magic and belief, is David Antrobus’s fading, shabby Ottoman's defeat – living a cold life, ending shut in a box of tricks.
Only Paul O’Mahony’s energised clown, clumsily trying to fit in a too-small vanishing box, seems unaware of change: the clown living always in the moment. Brunskill controls mood and uses sad, repetitively-patterned music to intensify the sense of people trapped by life.
After the interval, a move from America to early-sixties London for more humour and sadness, this time built on social and sexual awkwardness. Intense young clerk Bob has no idea how to entertain the girl he’s asked to dinner so asks self-confident workmate Ted along to help out. Ben Nathan’s Ted, bright, confident and happy in his low-level working life, attracts nervous Doreen.
The most Shafferish moment is Bob’s wild realisation he doesn’t know who he is, lost in his world of opera, realising Doreen’s drawn to Ted’s world of easy relationships, fag-packs and pop music. Tam Williams expresses this with expansive desperation.
David Siebert’s production is perfectly-pitched for this space, with its small moments of embarrassment: near strangers making heavy work of lighting a cigarette, Amy Neilson Smith’s Doreen perched in polite nerves on a chair edge, back as straight as her pile of hair, her face gradually draining enthusiasm when listening to Peter Grimes or the near-final Puccini-backed scene of alternating lust and propriety. Exhilarating stuff throughout.
Sing to Me Through Open Windows:
Andrew: Ashley George.
Ottoman: David Antrobus.
Loveless: Paul O’Mahony.
Director: Andy Brunskill.
The Private Ear:
Ted: Ben Nathan.
Bob: Tam Williams.
Doreen: Amy Neilson Smith.
Director: David Siebert.
Designer: Sharon Davey.
Lighting: Dan Staniforth.
2009-06-07 10:47:44