THE LADY'S NOT FOR BURNING. To 12 May.

London

THE LADY’S NOT FOR BURNING
by Christopher Fry

Finborough Theatre Finborough Pub 118 Finborough Road SW10 9ED To 12 May 2007
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Sun 3.30pm
Runs 2hr 20min One interval

TICKETS: 0870 4000 838
www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk (reduced ticket price online)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 22 April

Sound production – even without the sound.
With all the care gone into marshalling this large-cast play on the Finborough’s small stage, the rich medieval costuming for the story of a small town faced with a reluctant bride, a life-affirming alleged witch and a death-seeking soldier out-of-sorts - not to mention a script packed with references to offstage sounds - Walter Sutcliffe and his cast don’t deserve to have the sound-system pack up on them. But, it did; if for one performance only.

Still, there’s plenty of mellifluous music and evocative sound in Christopher Fry’s 1948 script. Its tones and atmosphere are English as can be, though the play’s source was German. And, within a decade, the play was not for performing, as the tide of British drama had turned against just about everything it stood for.

Doublethink Theatre Company’s revival hasn’t the tough clarity nor the fluency with Fry’s image-laden, often lyrical language, shown in Samuel West’s Minerva revival at Chichester a few years ago, but it possesses a paciness that prevents languorous indulgence in Fry’s language, thereby heightening the play’s comedy.

Some actors allow the flow of words to carry them downstream through the play. It’s a particular disappointment the long life and death argument (an effective love duo) for Thomas and Jennet tends towards this. Grant Gillespie tends to ‘force’ words to give the language an emotional surge; there's too little of the ardent fatigue with existence counterpointed naturally by language that’s life-asserting in its own right. Gemma Larke’s Jennet can allow words to rush in a generalised mood rather than pointing the individual thoughts.

But Larke has a life-enhancing sense, while Gillespie gives a sense of world-weariness reflected in nobody taking his death-wish seriously. Around them are good comic performances, like squabbling brothers Humphrey and Nicholas, both of a height but aware of their personality contrast. Morgan Brind’s snappy Nicholas has a fine, sullen comic manner.

As the older generation, Andrew Macbean gives mayor Hebble Tyson the frustration of authority unheeded, commonly seen in the period’s many assertions of English independent-mindedness, while Gay Soper’s Margaret is an acute example of social poise and poisonous tongue.

Richard: Patrick Myles
Thomas Mendip: Grant Gillespie
Alizon Eliot: Laura Sanchez
Nicholas Devize: Morgan Brind
Margaret Devize: Gay Soper
Humphrey Devize: Dan Starkey
Hebble Tyson: Andrew Macbean
Jennet Jourdemayne: Gemma Larke
Chaplain: Raymond Boot
Edward Tappercoom: Michael Kirk
Matthew Skipps: John Cooper-Day

Director: Walter Sutcliffe
Designer: Anna Jones
Lighting: Simon Bennison
Sound: Dominic Thurgood

2007-04-27 10:55:04