THE MAGISTRATE. To 20 October.
Pitlochry.
THE MAGISTRATE
by Arthur Wing Pinero.
Pitlochry Festival Theatre In rep to 20 October 2007.
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat 5, 22 Sept, 3, 13, 18 Oct 2pm.
Audio-described: enquire when booking.
Runs 2hr 30min Two intervals.
TICKETS: 01796 484626.
www.pitlochry.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 24 August.
Even Queen Victoria might have been amused.
Bernard Shaw didn't think much of him, but Sir Arthur Wing Pinero bestrode late Victorian and Edwardian West End theatre. His serious plays often concerned respectable ladies with disreputable secrets in their past. He turned a dab hand too to farce, and here there's also a respectable wife with a guilty secret: when Agatha Farringdon married her second husband, guilelessly benevolent London magistrate Aeneas Posket, she cut five years from her age, thereby making her son Cis, now a worldly 19, a schoolboy of 14.
Pinero skates over this unlikely deception by passing on to action familiar to anyone who'd crossed the Channel to watch French farces of the day. A respectable man from act one goes to a disreputable hotel in act two, where saucy things happen at increasingly hectic speed. A third act, back in respectable surrounds the following day leaves loose ends to be tied and explanations or concealments to be rounded off.
But Posket, unlike his French equivalents, doesn't go to some nice little niche for nooky. His precocious son leads him astray, while respectable intentions rather than libidinous lusts spiral the plot's lunacies. The only clothes taken off are overcoats and top-hats, the keenest appetite is a lady hungry for oysters and the height of physical contact is an inadvertent pinch under a well-covered table.
Posket has been played at Chichester by two actors with contrasting comic put-upon expertise, Alistair Sim and Michael Hordern. Robin Harvey Edwards doesn't eclipse them, but it's a long way from Chichester to Pitlochry and many years have passed. This is a fine performance of embarrassed respectability in its own right, Posket's re-enactment of his night-time escape from police a highlight. Steven Rae's Cis has apt worldly wisdom, comic in one so young, and Alan Steele's Wyke suggests the dubious past of a servant whose loyalty has its price.
There's a strong performance from David Horne as a retired, indignant army officer, and decent support elsewhere. With director Benjamin Twist keeping up the pace, and only a slightly cramped second act space providing restraint, anyone happy to accept the style of Pinero's day might happily sentence themselves to a couple of hours with Pitlochry's Magistrate.
Cis Farringdon: Steven Rae.
Beatie Tomlinson: Joanne Cummins.
Wyke/P C Harris`: Alan Steele.
Popham: Suzanne Donaldson.
Agatha Posket: Lorna McDevitt.
Aeneas Posket: Robin Harvey Edwards.
Bullamy/Inspector Messiter: Crawford Logan.
Charlotte Verrinder: Susan Coyle.
Isidore: Callum O'Neill.
Achille Blond/Mr Wormington: Rory Murray.
Colonel Lukyn: David Horner.
Captain Horace Vale: Greg Powrie.
Sergeant Lugg: Gavin Kean.
Director: Benjamin Twist.
Designer/Costume: Ken Harrison.
Lighting: Ace McCarron.
2007-08-25 11:05:51