STEAMING. To 30 July.

Harrogate

STEAMING
by Nell Dunn

Turkish Baths To 30 July 2005
Tue-Sat various dates 9.30am, 1pm, 5.30pm, 7pm
Runs 2hr 35min One interval

TICKETS: 01423 502116
www.harrogatetheatre,.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 15 July

Six ladies take the plunge in Harrogate.North Yorkshire's spa town and Stratford, East London are a world (or a society) apart. And Harrogate's finely-restored Turkish Baths are hardly the neglected institution Nell Dunn's 1981 play (premiered at Stratford's Theatre Royal) imagines. But Harrogate artistic director Hannah Chissick's right to stage her production in the local (mercifully unheated) steam-rooms.

There are limitations. Despite the intimacy of the Baths' small chambers and an audience of 50, the acclimatisation room of the long first scene provides an echoing environment, with some audience always behind each actor, resulting in a deliberate speech style more natural' to a theatre's proscenium arch.

The cast deal well with the other problem of close-up staging, the nudity. First to disrobe is glamorous Josie, her sharp-tongued openness dismissing shock-value. Further nudity fits finely into the convention thus established, keeping the play centre-stage. But the cast can't disguise the play's historical aspect; its issues of women's relationships remain pertinent but are spelled-out in ways modern consciousness would short-circuit.

The shared environment shows up Dunn's patchwork construction. When you're sharing the premises with the cast, you want to know where they are, what they're doing, more intensely than with characters walking on or off-stage. But that points to this production's success it all really does matter. And if, for example, Josie's relations with the man who's in-and-out of her life are forever changing, that becomes part of life's meandering pattern, while Josie Walker makes her financial worries extremely real.

As the action moves into two of the Baths' other areas, especially the most heated and enclosed for an especially intense development, the setting blends its atmosphere with the play. One relationship cuts to the core - elderly Mrs Meadows, doting on (yet possibly suffocating emotionally) her brain-injured daughter Dawn. Judy Wilson jabs moments of pained love through a convivial surface when the emphasis moves from Dawn's current doings to her future prospects, while Lorraine Cheshire's well-judged performance has an unself-conscious pleasure which suggests it is folly to be wise. By the end, it's clear why more than the setting should make this the hottest ticket in Harrogate.

Nancy: Gaynor Barrett
Jane: Victoria Carling
Dawn: Lorraine Cheshire
Violet: Kate Rutter
Josie: Josie Walker
Mrs Meadow: Judy Wilson

Director: Hannah Chissick
Assistant director: Phil Lowe

2005-07-18 16:13:19