SUMMER BEGINS. To 29 April.

London

SUMMER BEGINS
by David Eldridge

Southwark Playhouse 62 Southwark Bridge Road To 29 April 2006
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 3pm
Runs 2hr 10min One interval

TICKETS: 08700 601761 (24hrs No Booking Fee)
www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 22 April

Valuable revival of a play still well worth seeing.
As the end-of-season soccer social gives way to sunbathing in the park and the springtime of adolescence moves into the early summer of adult decisions, David Eldridge's 1997 play captures a quartet of East Londoners dealing with their pasts and moving into their futures. Sisters Gina and Sherry have different feelings towards mother Beth at home and their departed dad.

Gina’s boyfriend Dave has more ambition, and trade skills to match, than the others. But he hasn’t grown out of an adolescent facetiousness or inability to control himself, leading to a messy outcome after the heavy-drinking social. Meanwhile, university graduate Sherry on a Marks & Spencer management programme falls for unskilled, yet self-aware Lee.

As the videos (how soon material things date plays) pass round, Eldridge steadily opens his characters more fully to view. Those who start in the lead get overtaken. Sherry’s aware of how Gina will finally answer Dave’s proposal long before her sister realises it herself. Dave’s self-critical moments, ironically, emerge as a sign he’ll never change. Beth’s anger and pleasantness alike are founded in her fear of loneliness as she creeps through her 40s.

Amelia Nicholson’s production might have held back in the earlier scenes. There’s a lot of humour, but these scenes also establish the fundamental tensions which will play out through the rest of the action. Nicholson allows the words full force, yet there’s sometimes too little of the subtext breathing.

But if the production isn’t pitch-perfect here, it’s still strong and sympathetic, the characters’ balance of forthrightness and underlying uncertainties seeping through to the point where everyone except the self-assured Dave knows he’s going to be rejected in love and work. The news eventually reaches him through Sherry (sign of her essential ability to take a lead), while Lee finally comes clean over Dave’s job offer. Naomi Wattis’ and Toby Alexander’s fine performances make this moment tell through clearly tracking their characters’ development.

Good work from the others too, and a flexible set of dark and light, public and private places between 2 banks of audience from designer Naomi Dawson, aided by Richard Williamson’s lighting.

Gina Killick: Holly Atkins
Sherry Killick: Naomi Wattis
Dave Stams: Shaun Dooley
Lee Hulse: Toby Alexander
Beth Killick: Louise Bangay

Director: Amelia Nicholson
Designer/Costume: Naomi Dawson
Lighting: Richard Williamson
Sound: Sarah Weltman
Assistant director: Orna Salinger
Assistant designer: Alexandra Chrapkowska

2006-04-23 12:45:52