SOMEONE WHO'LL WATCH OVER ME. To 23 October.

Northampton

SOMEONE WHO'LL WATCH OVER ME
by Frank McGuinness

Royal Theatre To 23 October 2004
Tue-Sat 7.30pm
Runs 2hr No interval

TICKETS: 01604 624811
www.royalandderngate.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 21 October

A splendid revival that emphasises how high the Royal is riding.Macabre timing made this production coincide with a British hostage's death, both focusing Frank McGuiness's play and giving it a sense of detachment. His three Beirut hostages had a chance of survival, though their fates differ with their nationalities. Today's Iraq hostage-taking is more ruthless.

Irish playwright Frank McGuinness isn't addressing political issues; his shackled prisoners see no point in their capture; their cry is a resounding: Why? It's about the experience of being shut up, and confined with strangers - cut off from the familiar, from family and events in the wider world.

Unsurprisingly his Irishman is prominent; irritation between Edward and the older English academic Michael touches on historical bruises. Yet Michael, bereaved and with a failing career, is sympathetically drawn. Lost in the early English poems which form his cultural prop, this mild man in Lebanon ends up comforting himself with the medieval lament of the masterless Wanderer.

Edward finds things easier with American Adam, his first companion, whose rigorous physical regime is in part an attempt at mental control, which soon breaks down. It's one sign of the captives' mood swings, the conscious attempts to disappoint their listening captors by laughing, the surges of imaginative activity drinking, devising film scenarios and the contrasting anger and despair which map out the play.

This cast play the entire action seamlessly, each switch in mood made convincing in Toby Frow's intricately-paced production. Ben Stones' depressing set a sloping diamond built forward into the audience, with a single grille-radiator behind peeling floor-tiles - matches Johanna Town's lighting, suggesting a gloomy distance from the outside, a momentary corridor of bright light illuminating the road to freedom. In this space Frow creates variety of mood through space; the three fill the area as they join in a song or, coiled in thought and mental agony, withdraw to their dirty mattresses.

Ruari Conaghan's angry energy, Corey Johnson's hearty confidence slipping to despair, and Peter Shorey's initial blank-faced stare warming to the protecting lines of his beloved verse (thought so irrelevant by the world outside), are perfectly matched in a fine, sadly topical, revival.

Edward: Ruari Conaghan
Michael: Peter Shorey
Adam: Corey Johnson

Director: Toby Frow
Designer: Ben Stones
Lighting: Johanna Town
Music arranger: Richard Hammarton

2004-10-22 00:52:35