TEN RILLINGTON PLACE. Oldham Coliseum to 23 February.

Oldham

TEN RILLINGTON PLACE
by Kenny Miller, from a book by Ludovic Kennedy

Coliseum Theatre To 23 February 2002
Runs 1hr 55min One interval

TICKETS 0161 624 2829
Review Timothy Ramsden 2 February

A new production realises the potential in this theatrical exploration of personal and social psychosis.Kenny Miller's production first appeared at Glasgow Citizens' with two of the same cast members. It makes an even stronger impact on the Coliseum's raised stage than fitting tightly in the round at the Citizens' Circle Studio. The mass of candles, reflected in the smudgy distorting mirror behind the action, and the slow action in semi-dark have a ritualistic feel.

It's the rite of both the doomed central characters and the mid-century society whose repressive hypocrisy came down with such error of judgement on the mentally limited, physically scarred Timothy Evans and the mangled personality of serial-killer Christie.

Patti Clare's lawyer reads the trial transcript with officious rapidity, emphasising how Evans, with his child's mind in a man's body, is a sitting duck for conviction. Standing isolated on the two platforms which rise like segments of an Escher drawing from the rubble-strewn, bombsite stage, Stephen Scott's huddled Evans is unbearably moving.

Kennedy and Miller have a tougher job gaining understanding for Christie. A sexual inadequate fearing the women he desires, he gasses his lonely, desperate victims into unconsciousness, then rapes and strangles them.

They're greatly helped by Kenneth Alan Taylor's magnificent performance as Christie. A looming presence, his mild, reassuring manner and soft, strangulated voice (from a First War gas attack) give him the deceptive civility a myopic society was only too ready to take at face value.

Until, three years following Evans' execution, a new tenant at Rillington Place found evidence of his murders when tearing down a partition as thin as that between the apparently respectable Christie and the sorry figure who finally shuffles from his home without a single possession.

There was, Christie claimed, a voice he could not identify, a longing in his head. In a masterly imaginative detail Miller renders this as Kathleen Ferrier singing 'Blow the Wind Southerly'. A popular recording of the time, its yearning beauty - heard faintly as each murder approaches - takes us into Christie's perplexed mind.

So intensely do all four actors present this world that the occasional voiceovers – especially the easily judgmental final one – seem intrusive. It's the only fault in a moving portrayal of the dark side of the mind, and of society.

John Reginald Halliday Christie: Kenneth Alan Taylor
Ethel Christie/Ensemble: Judy Wilson
Timothy Evans/Ensemble: Stephen Scott
Beryl Evans/Ensemble: Patti Clare

Director/Designer: Kenny Miller
Lighting: Phil Davies

2002-02-04 17:36:36