THE MARRYING OF ANN LEETE. To 2 October.

London

THE MARRYING OF ANN LEETE
by Harley Granville Barker

Orange Tree Theatre To 2 October 2004
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat + 9,16 September 2.30pm
Audio-described 21 September , 23 September 2.30pm
Post show discussion 24 September
Runs 2hr 20min One interval

TICKETS: 020 8940 3633
www.orangetreetheatre.co.uk

Sympathetic, detailed production of a first play with a range of tone and style indicating a natural understanding of theatre.An 1899 play set at the close of the 18th century might sound like an exercise in quaint theatre archaeology. But 22-year old Harley Granville Barker, writing his first play, was set for the new century. Using history with as much contemporary infusion as any modern playwright, he set his action as the previous century was itself about to crumble away before the future.

Marrying, Ann discovers in her self-education picked up through observation, is a woman's profession. As daughter to a side-switching politician, out of funds and out of favour, she is destined for a marriage of (her father's) convenience. But Octavia Walters shows Ann, if not good-looking, is shrewd and frank. A less attractive performer might make the point more directly; Walters makes it through unglamorous expressions and stances as realisations sink in.

Her coolness towards her lordly suitor is astoundingly modern. While it's easy to see how Barker lost out in popularity to his friend, the wittily provocative Shaw, his dramaturgy in Sam Walters' production seems at least 60 years ahead of its time, recalling no writer so much as Edward Bond (compare the, admittedly funnier, proposal opening Bond's Restoration).

Then, the scene before the interval, as Ann's wounded and feverish father staggers off in delusive delirium as others talk on separate matters, the fragmented stage images and the declamatory writing for Leete, could come straight from 1960s or 1970s Bond.

Barker catches the flow or non-flow - of speech, with its sudden mind-switches, its non-consecutive thinking when people are gathered. And his tonal range is wide. After the sustained Orange Tree first act, moving from pre-dawn social confusion to night-time clarity, come two post-interval scenes, the first a high-coloured Hogarthian satire where socially mixed marriages among the Leetes cause short-tempered comedy, and the contrasting final scene, played with beautiful precision by Walters and Jack Sandle as her worker-husband on their first night alone in their cottage.

Director Sam Walters marshals his 16 actors on this small stage with near consummate skill (only the dominant act one water-feature causes some awkward moments of blocking). Among the distinctive playing there's the terse dialogue of the upright gardener with Ann's brother, rightly lacking the varnished certainty of gentry in-talk. And the excellent playing between David Timson's lawyer and Miranda Foster as Ann's older sister, compromised in her own unloving marriage, trying to smile amid misery and abandonment. Foster manages an unshowy depth of feeling which makes her gradually-revealed predicament a tragic counterbalance to Ann's hopeful way forward.

Ann Leete: Octavia Walters
Lord John Carp/Lord Arthur Carp: David Leonard
George Leete: David Antrobus
Sarah, Lady Cottesham: Miranda Foster
Mr Tatton/Mr Tozer: Robert Benfield
Carnaby Leete: Richard Howard
John Abud: Jack Sandle
Dr Remnant: Robin Parkinson
Mrs Opie: Joanna Wake
Dimmuck/Mr Prestige: David Barnaby
Mr Tegeen/Mr Crowe: David Timson
Mr Smallpiece: Morgan Symes
Sir George Leete: Peter Wyatt
Mrs George Leete: Sam Dowson
Lady Leete: Vilma Hollingbery
Mrs Prestige: Eve Shickle

Director: Sam Walters
Designer: Tim Meacock
Lighting: Ben Pacey

2004-09-08 16:45:44