THE BROWNING VERSION/SWANSONG To 19 September.

Tour.

SWANSONG and THE BROWNING VERSION
by Anton Chekhov translated by Stephen Mulrine by Terence Rattigan.

Theatre Royal Bath Productions Tour to 19 September 2009.
Runs 2hr* One interval.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 17 August at Oxford Playhouse.

Chekhov as an adequate curtain-raiser; Rattigan at his most devastating.
A neat coupling, here - two farewells, from long-time leading-actor Svetlovidov in Anton Chekhov’s short play, awaking alone in a deserted theatre after his final performance, and Andrew Crocker-Harris, forced by ill-health to leave his teaching post in a public school after 18 years, for a humble, less demanding post in a ‘crammer’.

Both quote Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. But while Chekhov’s character, stumbling roughly in the near-dark, merely refers to it alongside other past moments of performing glory, in Terence Rattigan’s hour-long play – the true crock of gold in Peter Hall’s production, from his company’s 2009 summer season at Bath’s Theatre Royal – the old teacher’s quiet reference to the play’s greatness is like a gleam of sun across a dried and dusty life.

Peter Bowles’ restrained Crocker-Harris, buttoned-up in his suit as in his mind, is someone whose outward abrasions have worn away through years of failure. The interpretation might miss out on some intense moments along the way, but builds to a tragic impact intensified by the moments of youthful enthusiasm showing through his reduction of Aeschylus to stuffy Victorian verbiage. The past has created a present filled with the most severe humiliation: the knowledge that he hasn’t the gift of being liked.

So it’s a single moment of apparent generosity that affects him. Even that’s smashed by his wife, who Candida Gubbins makes more disappointed than openly malicious, something else that works powerfully at the end, as the Crocker-Harrises sit stiffly down to their cold meal of hot food.

Bowles’ every move is straight-backed and deliberate, each word carefully placed; every syllable judicially weighed by a character who’s learned that hope brings disappointment, and to expect only what’s absolutely required.

The contrast’s made by Charles Edwards as younger teacher Frank Hunter. James Musgrave’s pupil Taplow talks to him keenly, while fearful and forced with Crocker-Harris.

James Laurenson’s headteacher, bringing bad news to one he knows will take it well, is another fine characterisation. But it’s in Bowles’ subtle moments of once-enthusiastic youth showing through ingrained present-day pedantry, and his eventual moment of tactful self-assertion, the production’s force truly lies.

(* or slightly less when the interval scene change works smoothly.)

Swansong:
Svetlovidov: Peter Bowles.
Nikita Ivanych: James Laurenson.

The Browning Version:
Taplow: James Musgrave.
Frank Hunter: Charles Edwards.
Millie Crocker-Harris: Candida Gubbins.
Andrew Crocker-Harris: Peter Bowles.
Dr Frobisher: James Laurenson.
Peter Gilbert: Peter Sandys-Clarke.
Mrs Gilbert: Elizabeth Crarer.

Director: Peter Hall.
Designer: Christopher Woods.
Lighting: Peter Mumford.
Sound: Gregory Clarke.
Associate director: Tom Littler.
Associate lighting: Rachael McCutcheon.

2009-08-19 03:37:58