THE ANNIVERSARY. To 2 October.
Liverpool
THE ANNIVERSARY
by Bill MacIlwraith
Liverpool Playhouse To 2 October 2004
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 2pm & 23 Sept 1.30pm
BSL Signed 1 Oct
Runs 2hr 10min One interval
TICKETS: 0151 709 4776
www.everymanplayhouse.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 25 September
An English Arsenic and Old Lace with verbal poison replacing the more traditional sort.After Denis Lawson's terrific Liverpool revival, few are likely to have the will to try their own hand at prolific TV writer Bill MacIlwraith's sole well-known stage play, which in 1965 gave dramas of family tensions and secrets a macabre makeover. In a spaciously respectable house (a large room with grand staircase entrance from designer Robin Don) a dreadful matriarchal dragon madly control-freaks her 3 grown-up sons, tying them to the increasingly dodgy family building business.
Other characters have names; Mum needs none. Her position is all. Fending off younger women with an infectious delight in wit and malice, she significantly favours the one son who brings no rival home, compulsively stealing and wearing women's clothing instead. Linen presents no rival.
It's here the play most closely breathes a sixties Ortonesque atmosphere, though without the wild farcical display of cross-dressing Orton would surely have relished. It's here too it shows its period, the plot being nudged forward by social and official attitudes which have moved on. And, in this production, the offspring concerned must have a specialised knack at fitting into clothes sizes somewhat different from his own.
The action's set on the evening Mum annually celebrates her dead husband. She's built a shrine on the wall round his photo; as showily insincere and cloyingly manipulative as her behaviour. Sheila Hancock has a wonderful time in the role, giving a bravura demonstration of authoritative, unexaggerated acting that makes maximum comic impact. Smilingly flighty, switching to brutally unpleasant, always biding her time for a reply, she revels in the vitriol of confrontation, manipulating and exploiting others' weakness.
Rosie Cavaliero's daughter-in-law knows her enemy, fighting for her husband's independent with mixed tenacity and resignation, crying out or even flinging herself full-length in anger, identifying the enemy's strategies as they appear. Madeleine Worrall's newcomer to the family trauma has a subtler line of attack (Worrall's efficient but could do with more variety of manner and tone in to make her opposition more dynamic), suggesting she may be the next Mum in waiting. The men are good but, fittingly, second fiddles to their women.
Karen: Rosie Cavaliero
Tom: Liam Garrigan
Mum: Sheila Hancock
Henry: Tony Maudsley
Terry: Mark Womack
Shirley: Madeleine Worrall
Director: Denis Lawson
Designer: Robin Don
Lighting: David W Kidd
Sound: John Leonard
Voice/Dialect coach: Terry Besson
Assistant director: Natalie Abrahami
2004-09-20 01:42:52