THE LADY IN THE VAN. To 26 February.
Tour
THE LADY IN THE VAN
by Alan Bennett
Tour to 26 February 2005
Runs 2hr 20min One interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 18 January at Arts Theatre Cambridge
Revival confirms Bennett's wisdom and humour.He may be the most self-effacing of authors yet Alan Bennett has put himself not once, but twice into his play. The outer Alan interacts with the world, registering immediate reactions to situations. The inner Bennett comments and reflects on the other's responses.
The world' here is a short section of the North London street where Bennett lived for many years, and the front garden where he allowed an unkempt, unhygienic old woman to live in her van for some 20 years. His play provides a star turn for this Lady, Miss Shepherd, as well as examining why he let her stay.
Its interplay of truth and fiction, spoken cause and concealed reason, could now be seen as a kind of suburban Copenhagen, without the scientific pulse of Michael Frayn's play. The revue-satirist remains alive in Bennett, always making a dramatic point through his brief-etched louts, the ambulance driver who handles Miss Shepherd as Bennett never dared (the script revels in her stenches and stains), and a complacent social worker from Jargonland, a smiling woman finally revealed as a smilingly benevolent despot before whom Bennett and the English language stand helpless.
Christopher Luscombe's strong, dramatically coherent revival wisely casts two facially distinct Bennetts. David Holt's square-features go with the composed manner of the inner Bennett voice, while the heights of Paul Bigley's physiognomy contort alongside vocal ejaculations as he seeks reason from his demanding (non-paying) garden tenant, his decaying mother who invokes a guilt that transfers to the van Lady, and the outer world of breezily tolerant neighbours and officialdom.
Susan Hampshire may not have the capacious bag of histrionics Maggie Smith brought to the role, but her grey, decrepit Lady steers a clear dramatic line, her present age gradually revealing its links with youthful guilt and a musical talent crushed by religion. As Bennett pleads with visitors, Miss Shepherd is several times revealed praying (the only time the van doors reveal her interior). This character, apparently a down-at-heel Lady Bracknell with her confidence and one-line put-downs, is inwardly as divided as her half-unwilling, much-inconvenienced host. It's Bennett's final irony.
Alan Bennett: David Holt
Miss Shepherd: Susan Hampshire
Alan Bennett: Paul Bigley
Mam: Antonia Pemberton
Rufus: Tim Wallers
Pauline: Victoria Carling
Interviewer: Julia West
Lout/Ambulance Driver: Thomas Padden
Social Worker: Deborah MacLaren
Underwood: Nick Lucas
Mam's Doctor/Leo Fairchild: James Curran
Miss Shepherd's Doctor: Hugh Osborne
Director: Christopher Luscombe
Designer: Jonathan Fensom
Lighting: Jason Taylor
Sound: Rich Walsh
Composer: Malcolm McKee
Movement: Jane Gibson
Dialect coach: Sally Grace
Make-up: Michael Ward
2005-01-19 08:47:11