THE LADY FROM DUBUQUE.
London.
THE LADY FROM DUBUQUE
by Edward Albee.
Theatre Royal Haymarket .
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Wed & Sat 3pm.
Runs 1hr 45min One interval.
TICKETS: 0870 145 1171 (up to £3.50 per ticket booking fee).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 21 March.
Intriguing play, immaculate production.
Death is the name of the game of the dame who’s come all the way from Dubuque. The ‘Lady from Dubuque’ (a New Yorker editor’s creation, somewhere between Aunt Edna and Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells) arrives from heartland America in the material world of sophisticated Connecticut urbanites living on their wit, taking nothing seriously.
Within this set-up, playwright Edward Albee plays a charade as elaborate as anything since Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Only here it’s a matter not of life but death; a harder question to propose in theatrical terms. Albee puts beneath it another, bigger one: “Who am I?”. This opens the drama as part of a party game, but becomes dead serious by act two.
By when the stage is riddled with questions, about who’s being serious when; about how much these friends are friends. So, Carol, who starts seeming stupid, ends up the shrewdest, while even her natural hair colour’s in doubt. It depends who you believe, and when. Only one thing’s certain; Jo is dying, diseased and young.
Amid this, it’s no surprise theatrical reality’s questioned, with direct address to the auditorium and audience laughter referred to by characters - yet this is the 'reality' of soliloquy, a variant of Eugene O’Neill’s direct-thought speeches in Strange Interlude.
In Anthony Page’s flawless production all this is moving as well as witty, each stratagem enriching the dramatic flow to the point where Catherine McCormack’s Jo moves from pain-propelled expressions of hate to silent acceptance of the Lady who claims to be her mother, into whose arms she gladly collapses.
Maggie Smith combines an airy wonder which easily deflects questions darted at her, with a quiet, almost background, yet ever-significant care for Jo, calming her, stroking her hair, as the young woman becomes more than half in love with easeful death.
Around this is a contrasting male duel between Jo’s Husband Sam and Elizabeth’s smooth-talking, hard-hitting enforcer Oscar (superb performances both from US actors Robert Sella and Peter Francis James, irate and in absolute self-control respectively).
This play bombed in 1980; now it seems to hit the bullseye.
Lucinda: Vivienne Benesch.
Sam: Robert Sella.
Jo: Catherine McCormack.
Fred: Glenn Fleshler.
Edgar: Chris Larkin.
Carol: Jennifer Regan.
Oscar: Peter Francis James.
Elizabeth: Maggie Smith.
Director: Anthony Page.
Designer: Hildegard Bechtler.
Lighting: Howard Harrison.
Costume: Amy Roberts.
2007-03-22 11:37:45