SNAKE IN THE GRASS. To 19 September.
Scarborough/Newcastle-under-Lyme
SNAKE IN THE GRASS
by Alan Ayckbourn.
Stephen Joseph Theatre (The Round) In rep to 22 August 2008.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 7, 16 Aug 2.30pm.
then New Vic Theatre Newcastle-under Lyme in rep 4-19 September 2008.
4,6,8,,19 Sept 7.30pm Mat 13 Sept 2.30pm.
Runs 1hr 55min One interval.
TICKETS: 01723 370541.
www.sjt.uk.com (Scarborough)
01782 717962.
www.newvictheatre.org.uk (Newcastle-under-Lyme).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 1 August.
Drama grips tight as an anaconda.
This summer season of Ayckbourn chillers, the ‘Bump in the Night’ trio, reveal the playwright using suspense and shock different ways. Snake, from 2002, is a dark drama under the spine-tingling and occasional rib-tickling surface. The poster tells it all: a male figure watching behind three women. For Annabel and Miriam’s father has, snakelike, wormed his way into their psyches by his treatment of them when children.
Like all these plays, Snake is also about the search for love, and what can happen when love is distorted or feels betrayed. Amid the sudden shocks and sense of malevolence comes an oasis of calm where the sisters talk about love and reveal the ways their father distorted and misused it.
It’s fittingly father’s voice that’s finally heard, calling from the ill-kempt nocturnal lawn with its rusting, decayed pavilion and sawn-off tree-stump on Pip Leckenby’s suitably uneven set. It calls to the sole remaining character, whose hints of childish manner, speech and movement, are ultimately revealed by costume and movement to be a severe case of arrested development, explaining her behaviour overall.
What happened years ago might not be a particularly surprising revelation. But Ayckbourn develops these serious matters along with plenty of intrigue and some character comedy as Annabel returns home from halfway round the world after her father’s death, her own life in ruins, to find her sister facing blackmail, and her own confidence progressively undermined.
Ayckbourn’s production presents all this without cheating for momentary effects. The atmosphere’s enhanced by Kath Geraghty’s lighting, green grass giving way to silvery dark round the edges and in the fearsome overgrown tennis-court Annabel so fears.
All the playing’s first rate, Liza Goddard moving from brisk impatience through indignation to increasing nervousness, Susie Blake giving Miriam a frenetic anxiety, at first explained through her external situation, but eventually seen to arise from the plotting hatched in her damaged psyche. And Ruth Gibson as the nurse implicated from the sidelines, sure of herself and with a sharp edge rooted in the part she thinks she’s playing in a diabolic plot. All round, terrifyingly terrific.
Annabel: Liza Goddard.
Miriam: Susie Blake.
Alice: Ruth Gibson.
Director: Alan Ayckbourn.
Designer: Pip Leckenby.
Lighting: Kath Geraghty.
Music: John Pattison.
Fight director: Alison de Burgh.
2008-08-06 11:49:54