THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE. To 16 October.
THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE
by James M Cain adapted by Andrew Rattenbury
West Yorkshire Playhouse (Quarry Theatre) To 16 October 2004
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu 1.30pm Sat 2pm
Audio-described 9 Oct 2pm 12 Oct
BSL Signed 1 Oct
Captioned 13 Oct
Post-show discussion 30 Sept 7.30pm
Runs 2hr 40min One interval
TICKETS: 0113 213 7700
www.wyp.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 23 September
Theatrical spectacle substitutes for dramatic soul.It must have been terribly tempting for director Lucy Bailey, designer Bunny Christie and actor Charlotte Emmerson to repeat their triumph turning a Tennessee Williams filmscript Baby Doll into a magnificent piece of moody theatre. Where better to find more wrought passions, more lives skewed astray by passion than hard-boiled crime novelist James M Cain, whose much-filmed story now hits the stage? Yet the move brings the kind of retribution events work upon the lovers Frank and Cora, at the story's centre.
After an opening where Frank's thrown off the back of a lorry, establishing his down-and-out credentials (criminal ones follow) he finds work at the Twin Oaks diner (which never seems to have a customer or any evidence of one having recently been in). With his fine physique and dangerous manner he attracts the frustrated wife of the owner and, Therese Raquin-like, they kill the kindly, dull husband (who's Greek; adapter Andrew Rattenbury makes the point about the lovers' racist contempt).
The lovers seem doomed in an action almost entirely played out within a low-ceilinged compartment - the diner, then briefly a police-station and courtroom. Occasionally it ventures out of this confinement, notably for the car-ride where Papadakis is killed. Frank sends the car crashing over a cliff. Designer Bunny Christie sends it through the roof, its lights glaring at Frank during his interrogation then hanging over the subsequent life of the pair. It's the first stage of the diner's journey towards wreckage.
Events proceed through the dead man's bloody ghost, Banquo-like, observing their deteriorating relationship (another Zola parallel) to an endgame where every hole and crevice is infested with characters bringing retribution. And the car has a final, horrific part to play in the action's culmination.
Add in Django Bates' superbly moody music, simple melodic phrases curling and swooping with changes in colour, and Jon Buswell's atmospheric lighting, angular for the court scenes, bleak elsewhere, and there's a first-rate theatrical enterprise from the moment a storm sets the huge illuminated diner-sign swinging and creaking overhead.
But it dwarfs the human drama. Even the performances are strongest when contributing to the stage pictures - Charlotte Emmerson's nervy, distraught movements, Patrick O' Kane's sudden, violent decisiveness. Or Malcolm Rennie's interrogator, leaning over Frank, coaxing, bullying with vengeful enthusiasm and a sophisticated determination to match Crime and Punishment's Porfiry.
For all the passionate clinches and urgent vocal tones there seems a lack of individual human reality in these people, as if the production's not interested in such unglamorous subtlety. Bailey is a fine director; let's hope she's not falling too much in love with her vivid theatrical sense to the detriment of the human soul of drama. Or maybe it's the attraction of the social dimension.
When the first films of this story were made, it was still possible to speak of American justice and stir a popular chord. Now, it rings hollow as populist rhetoric, and the corruption of police and lawyers is transparent. As is the way it's left to fate or accident to bring about the outcome justice cannot reach.
What's lost on the human scale is shown in the beautiful performance by Joseph Alessi, as the sharp-mannered lawyer defending the murderers. And especially as the victim, who may be callow and an inadequate husband, but is quietly kind and loving.
Frank Chambers: Patrick O' Kane
Nick Papadakis/Katz: Joseph Alessi
Cora Papadakis: Charlotte Emmerson
State Cop/Barlow: Robert Jezek
Sackett: Malcolm Rennie
Warder/Jeremies: David Smith
Kennedy: Aran Bell
Madge Allen: Clara Perez
Dawson: Lawrie Robinson
Director: Lucy Bailey
Designer: Bunny Christie
Lighting: Jon Buswell
Sound: Mic Pool
Music: Django Bates
Voice: William Conacher
Fight director: Renny Krupinski
Assistant director: Sarah Punshon
2004-09-23 19:03:16