STAIRS TO THE ROOF by Tennessee Williams. Minerva Theatre to 27 October.
Chichester
STAIRS TO THE ROOF
by Tennessee Williams
Minerva Theatre To 27 October 2001
Runs 2hr 20min One interval
TICKETS 01243 781312
Review Timothy Ramsden 10 October
Raw play, good performances, brilliant direction in one of England's finest theatre spaces.Written around the age of thirty, this play shows Tennessee having a touch of the O'Neill's. The stairs going up from the 16th floor of Consolidated Shirtmakers exist only for people who want to escape stifling commercial life.
Aidan McArdle's office clerk Benjamin D. Murphy goes on the run from job, prospects and nagging wife, with Catherine Walker, The Girl (no name – there's Expressionism for you). They set free the caged zoo animals in the city park. But everyone else is caged in – an office ensemble mutter anonymously, hold up paper skyscrapers or look with choric longing from behind a confining glass screen, while at home everyone sleep on desk-tops, work invading, and stifling, their dreams (designer: Angela Davies).
Voice-over laughter repeatedly cackles at scene endings, part of Kay Basson's sound design. The laughs turns out to belong to Mr E (Andrew Melville) whose eventual additive to the romantic pair's lives is the offer of a new world, to which they fly as, upstage, business papers are flung in the office's reconditioned air while the crowd surges joyously to the roof.
It's simplistic enough and could be risible without Lucy Bailey's atmospheric, jazz-soaked production. The luscious whoops and plangent melodies of Django Bates' score are key to the production's success, as is Jon Buswell's moody lighting.
At the play's mystic heart is the night-time dream park, with its mystical golden wheel in the sky resolving into a slow, distantly turning funfair ride, accompanied by Bates' insistently repetitive melodic tinkling. It's a serious burlesque, with touches of Mayakovsky, encompassing crime – the opening of animal cages - and comically attempted punishment, a keystone cops chase foiled by a carnival troupe fresh from their open-air Beauty and the Beast.
Williams may still have been a promising writer around 1942, but Bailey – as she showed with her Birmingham/National/West End production of his Baby Doll - is a more than accomplished director.
Mr Gum/Night Watchman/Zoo Keeper/Carnival Clown: Tom Hodgkins
Alfred/Athlete/Young Soldier/Zoo Guard/Carnival Prince: Sven Pannell
A Designer/Mike/Zoo Guard/Carnival Pianist: Sam Kenyon
Benjamin D. Murphy: Aidan McArdle
Mr Warren B. Thatcher/Policeman/Carnival Beast: Mark Heenahan
The Girl: Catherine Walker
Jim/Carnival Narrator/Mr P: Bohdan Poraj
Bertha/Helen/Swan: Joanne McQuinn
Alma/Edna/Carnival Beauty/Miss Q: Jane Cameron
Mr E: Andrew Melville
Director: Lucy Bailey
Designer: Angela Davies
Lighting: Jon Buswell
Sound: Kay Basson
Composer: Django Bates
2001-10-11 11:41:30