THE MOLLUSC. To 29 July.

London.

THE MOLLUSC
by H H Davies.

Finborough Theatre Finborough Pub 118 Finborough Road SW10 9ED To 29 July 2007.
Sun-Mon 8pm.
Runs 2hr 5min Two intervals.

TICKETS: 0870 4000 838 (24hr no booking fee).
www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk
(reduced full-price tickets online).
Review:Timothy Ramsden 16 July.

A Mollusc with a strong grip.
Just like theatre. You wait nearly a century for a Mollusc, then two arrive only a year apart; though Liverpool Playhouse disguised its 2006 revival as The Lady of Leisure. That was a more refined production, but with its overtly modern slant for the title character it reached less close to the play’s heart than Tom Littler’s production for Primavera at the Finborough.

Though Littler makes his mollusc more knowing in her manipulations than she might be, increasing the comedy but losing out on potential character complexity, he is clearsighted about this 1907 social comedy’s satire upon a middle-class, reasonably moneyed type that must have been more prevalent in Edwardian days when women didn’t have jobs and men were their supposedly devoted servants.

It was written for leading actors of its day, playing on a large proscenium stage, but this young company playing intimately in the round for modern audiences have a good sense of style as well as modern responses. They keep a sense of formality, and the production serves the play’s structure by having two intervals (amazing how many 3-act revivals are spoiled by re-jigged intervals).

Mrs Baxter, the mollusc, believes herself busy but never has energy to do anything. It’s a family trait, which brother Ted has deliberately countered by a physical life out West. As he says, a mollusc is not lazy, but will expend great energy to avoid shifting. And if this means spoiling other people’s lives for their own convenience, that’s what they’ll do.

Moir Leslie produces a repertoire of expressions to aid Mrs Baxter’s manipulations; there’s the sweet smile, the gentle voice, the shocked disappointment. There are neatly-pointed verbal tricks, putting off a picnic by shifting from “will” to “would”, or seeming to agree with a proposition then adding a phrase which undermines it. With Sally Leonard’s Miss Roberts having a sufficiently modern tinge to make the character sympathetic without undermining a sense of period, and contrasting males in Simon Poland’s anxious husband and Andrew P Stephens’ determined, if long-thwarted brother, this is worth catching. Unless you want to risk hanging-on till 2107.

Miss Roberts: Sally Leonard.
Mr Baxter: Simon Poland.
Mrs Baxter: Moir Leslie.
Tom Kemp: Andrew P Stephen.

Director: Tom Litler.
Designer: Pip Swindall.
Lighting: Christopher Nairne.
Assistant director: Piers Barclay.

2007-07-17 08:09:10