THE BIGGLESWADES by Torben Betts. White Bear to 25 November.

London

THE BIGGLESWADES
by Torben Betts

White Bear Theatre To 25 November 2001
Runs 1hr 30min No interval

TICKETS 020 7793 9193
Review Timothy Ramsden 11 November

Dramatic assault on middle-class, middle-aged marriage needs more on-stage punch.They've an ironing-board in common, but the 1956 attic flat of Look Back in Anger is nothing to the detached paranoia of Torben Betts' inward looking middle-England. Betts has lighted on the small town of Biggleswade, up the A1 on the Bedfordshire/Cambridgeshire border, as the crucible for his meltdown of a lifestyle where male assurance and female acquiescence are married in a hermetic, greyed-out existence.

The Biggleswades' home may have a global map on the wall, but it's no window on the world. Symbolically, foreign parts get slid aside when there's some domestic detail to convey through the serving hatch. Small-minded routine is Brian's order of the day and Mrs B. is expected to accept the role of dresser alongside that of egg boiler, scrambler and poacher, plus being mirror for her husband's stilted expression of simplistic nostrums.

The play's dramatic territory lies somewhere between Ionesco's The Bald Prima Donna and Beckett's Endgame. Formalised expression ('Your assumption is well-founded,' is a Brian way of saying 'Yes') overlays lack of anything much to say. And Brian's bullying of the Wife whose disappearance for a few moments fills him with anxiety, while she runs round after him with increasing resentment, recalls the master/servant relation of Beckett's Hamm and Clov.

It points to the new play's limitation. The urban paranoia which makes Brian take pot-shots whenever he hears what he terms a 'Cry of despair' - a repeated sound close on as resonant as The Cherry Orchard's breaking string – enriches the mix, but much of the play retreads familiar dramatic territory.

Because of the unusual absurdist form Betts uses, he might still generate sparks from the situation. There's a sinister tinge to the ticking grandfather clock with its face without hands, for example. But it would need more inventive direction and stronger performances than the play receives in its premiere. Richard Latham is tactful as the friend on whom Brian eventually visits his fears, and Illona Linthwaite charts the wife's voyage to misery and fatigue, her little rebellions on the way picked out in the red she dons and discards. But there's room for far more focus and variety in Jestyn Philips' Brian. It's tricky for the actor, but playing grey shouldn't mean becoming dull.

Brian Biggleswade: Jestyn Phillips
The Wife: Illona Linthwaite
The Friend: Richard Latham

Director: Peter Craze
Designer: Margarete Forsyth
Lighting: Neil Harvey
Sound: Derek Carlyle

2001-11-12 16:01:37