THE ASTONISHED HEART/STILL LIFE. To 10 April.
Liverpool
THE ASTONISHED HEART/STILL LIFE
by Noel Coward
Liverpool Playhouse To 10 April 2004
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 2pm & 1 April 1.30pm
BSL Signed 9 April
TICKETS: 0151 709 4776
www.everymanplayhouse.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 26 March
Astonished member of the audience too; this is theatre immaculately produced, superbly acted.
The West End could do it glitzier, but no better. Philip Wilson's precise, emotionally detailed production makes the most of these Coward slivers. And his cast handle everything from walk-on to central torment superbly.
In The Astonished Heart (which could be title for the whole evening) Jo Stone-Fewings' psychiatrist finds his mental expertise no help in an emotional whirlpool with his wife's friend Leonora. The hour-long play's given a tightness by telling the torrid story as a death's-bed flashback a sudden chord and flick of lighting signalling the time-switch.
Stone-Fewings' dependable profile juts at angles in his perplexity; Nancy Carroll's pencil-slim Leonora has a contrasting feline fluidity. Peter McKintosh's smart modern flat's dominated by the window whose part in the drama is foreshadowed early, while beshrouding present-day' fog contrasts the brightness of earlier meetings.
The fog, and Leonora's dash to her lover's bedside, is matched by steam-trains rushing past the station where life stops for doctor Alec Harvey and wife-and-mother Laura on their Thursday meetings in Still Life, the play beefed up into runaway-success cine-weepie Brief Encounter. The play's simpler and more effective.
Wilson impeccably balances the pair's obsessed, guilt-ridden meetings with the happy-go-lucky flirtations around them. Carroll and Stone-Fewings express each emotional stage of the central relationship, renunciation and resolve following helpless desire. Carroll's sudden final-meeting rush outside as her lover's train departs forcefully signifies her emotional desperation. Heather Craney's chatty Dolly is full of comic (yet tragic here too) unreflective chatter and smiles.
There's biting irony in Heart's end as Christian Faber's wish to see Leonora converts to a call for his wife. And Carroll's huge agony at the end of Still Life would be pure, unexpressed tragedy, if the tear-bleared face and brandy-glass didn't suggest a more sordid future.
Tessa Churchard is moving as the wife restraining her emotions, living a life without love in the first play, then hilarious as a station buffet-manager, auto-asking cake or pastry' on a rising cadence, Coward's idea of the respectable working-class woman ordering others' lives in the routine world around the Harvey/Jesson love. What a performance. What a production. Faultless.
The Astonished Heart
Leonora Vail: Nancy Carroll
Barbara Faber: Tessa Churchard
Susan Birch: Heather Craney
Tim Verney: Daniel Crowder
Sir Reginald French: John Elkington
Ernest: Paul Regan
Christian Faber: Jo Stone-Fewings
Still Life:
Beryl Waters: Beccy Armory
Laura Jesson: Nancy Carroll
Myrtle Bagot: Tessa Churchard
Young Woman/Dolly Messiter: Heather Craney
Stanley/Johnnie: Daniel Crowder
Albert Godby: John Elkington
Young Man/Bill/George: Paul Regan
Alec Harvey: Jo Stone-Fewings
Director: Philip Wilson
Designer: Peter McKintosh
Lighting: Neil Austin
Sound: John Leonard
Voice/Dialect coach: Neil Swain
Fight director: Malcolm Ranson
2004-03-29 12:56:22