SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER.

Sheffield/Tour/London

SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER
by Tennessee Williams

Lyceum Theatre to 28 February then tour to 24 April 2004
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat 19, 26 February 2pm, 28 February 3pm (Sheffield)
Audio-described 25 February
BSL Signed 24 February
Runs 1hr 35min No interval;

TICKETS: 0114 249 6000 (Sheffield)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 17 February

Transferred to Albery Theatre, London

A hothouse of emotion brought brilliantly to life.
There are two stars on stage and, opera-like, each is given their solo aria. First, it's Diana Rigg's matriarch, her hand on the family finances, strangling in probate her relatives' hope of inheriting from son Sebastian, who died, suddenly, the previous summer.

Others occasionally speak, only emphasising how Mrs Venable controls life here, through her wealth and iron will, just as the temperature's controlled in this hothouse, with gusts of artificially-generated steam, its huge metal sides opening, then finally clanging shut, prison-like.

She's kept an idealised memory of Sebastian's memory alive, his book of poems lying amid the lurid jungle of plants and branches snaking across the set. And as his cousin threatens her memories, this old lady shows the dark side of sponsorship, offering funds to Mark Bazeley's (a tactfully controlled performance) doctor if he'll lobotomise the younger woman. She argues keenly, hopefully, before revealing, stiletto-like, her purpose, 'After the operation, who would believe her?'

In her lilac, jewelled dress, Rigg's character's a visual opposite to Victoria Hamilton's Catharine, dressed in simple black. Her alternative story of the dead son draws a figure with a secret life, his mother's denied, his life ending in violent street-revenge from the wider public Mrs Venable regards with such horror.

Hamilton's face is first seen peering in puzzled anxiety through the rear door-window; characters are repeatedly seen, mistily, there - watching, waiting in this enclosed, wary world.

If Venable is an invalid, moving from stick to wheelchair, all hunched shoulders, head projecting forward eager for her plans to be implemented, Catharine is upright, tight-held nerves projecting her around the room, exposed like the land-born turtles of Mrs Venable's story - vulnerable babies racing back to water before they're devoured by birds of prey - whose squawking is incorporated at moments of threat into Adam Cork's soundscape.

Catharine's no pure victim - she speaks firm and fast (some more differentiation at times is about all that could be asked of Michael Grandage's finely-detailed, theatrically forceful production), has a utilitarian view of love and can stub out a cigarette on someone's flesh.

And as the truth's revealed, it's the old lady who seems more victim-like, silenced, shawl covering her mouth in horror.

Grandage is probably right to damp down the venality of the other family members - Abigail McKern as Catharine's mother mops her chin, feeling the literal heat as she does the emotional temperature. The Hollys, and the constant Nursing Sister Nun were both more evident in Glasgow Citizens' recent studio production. But this is about as good as it's going to get, in any season.

Mrs Venable: Diana Rigg
Doctor Cukrowicz: Mark Bazeley
Miss Foxhill: Jennifer McEvoy
George Holly: Patrick Kennedy
Mrs Holly: Abigail McKern
Catharine Holly: Victoria Hamilton
Sister Felicity: Virginia Denham

Director: Michael Grandage
Designer: Christopher Oram
Lighting: Howard Harrison
Sound/Music: Adam Cork
Dialect coach: Joan Washington
Associate director: Nikolai Foster

2004-02-18 14:33:53