THE DRUID'S REST To 21 September.
London.
THE DRUID’S REST
by Emlyn Williams.
Finborough Theatre above Finborough Brasserie 118 Finborough Road SW10 9ED To 21 September 2009.
Sun-Mon 7.30pm.
Runs 2hr 20min One interval.
TICKETS: 0844 847 1652 (24hr no booking fees).
www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk (reduced full-=price tickets online).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 13 September.
Pub comedy in a pub theatre.
Emlyn Williams refers in this play to the Welsh connection with Patagonia – where drinker, amateur Welsh language poet and tramp Issmal South America spent part of his life. Another link’s growing, with Earl’s Court. Former frequent Finborough director Kate Wasserberg is now at Mold’s Clwyd Theatr Cymru, where she recently premiered Finborough writer James Graham’s A History of Falling Things in the Emlyn Williams auditorium.
It was there, aptly, that this 1947 farcical comedy was most recently seen. Mold’s in Flintshire, where Williams spent his childhood in the family pub, a place not too like – it’s to be hoped – The Druid’s Rest, where landlord Job sees his business as second to being local choirmaster, his younger son Tommos has his head constantly in novels, and consequently in the clouds, while Sarah Jane mixes serving with activities as a puritanical suffragette.
The local policeman’s in on the singing, and the Sunday drinking. Among these impractical Welsh romantics only Job’s wife Kate has a sense of organisation and drive; and she’s from working-class London. Given her tendency to fret it’s hard to see any advantage in being a practical Anglo-Saxon. However awkward quiet young Tommos’s lurid imagination, or however dubious Issmal’s poetic originality, they suggest a density of existence denied to Kate, or the lordly interloper whose arrival initiates, strangely late-on in the evening, a series of farcical misunderstandings.
Though David Cottis’s production is a mite cramped on the set of the Finborough’s Shaw production (Shaw and Emlyn Williams – there’s a dual-National repertory) and there are some hesitant moments (the cast only get to perform twice a week), this is a strong outing, with Anna Lindup’s sympathetically concerned cockney contrasted by David Broughton-Davies’ Job, expansively optimistic amid the trials of life and competition in the forthcoming Eisteddfod.
Rachel Isaac brings bustling enjoyment to her role as earnest killjoy, nightly prowling Lovers’ Lane with warnings of dire consequences from amatory pleasures. Bennet Thorpe as the other English influence has a blithe benignity that humorously contrasts the dark suspicions over his identity, while Joshua McCord provides a meek exterior for the luridly studious Tommos.
Kate Edwards: Anna Lindup.
Glan: Michael Norledge.
Tommos: Joshua McCord.
Sarah Jane Jehovah: Rachel Isaac.
Issmal Hughes South America: Dafydd Broughton-Davies.
Job Edwards: David Broughton-Davies.
Zachariah Policeman: Alyn Gwyndaf.
A Mysterious Wayfarer: Bennet Thorpe.
Director: David Cottis.
Designer: Fiona Parker.
Lighting/Sound: Ben Turnbull
2009-09-15 06:26:47