THE RAT TRAP. To 23 December.
London
THE RAT TRAP
by Noel Coward
Finborough Theatre 118 Finborough Road SW10 9ED To 23 December 2006
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Sun 3.30pm
Runs 2hr 10min One interval
TICKETS: 0870 4000 838
www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk (full price tickets reduced online; no booking fee for any ticket)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 10 December
Unexpected intensity from a new playwright 88 years ago.
Noel Coward’s first play, from 1918, shows young people with intelligences of their own trapped like battling rats within the confines of marriage. The pre-nuptial fondness and intertwining bodies of high-ranking fiction-writer Sheila and new playwright Keld sour to bickering, then rage and violence by the second scene (the first in their home), which allows a wife no creative room of her own. A hard-hitting play, Rat Trap wasn’t played until 1926, when its author was famous. It lasted just 12 performances in Hampstead, making the Finborough’s its longest run to date.
Tim Luscombe’s production sparkles, making flexible use of the tiny space for the 3 locations (staging’s in-the-round with just 1 or 2 rows on each side), with fine, assured performances. Gregory Finnegan’s Keld grows in hard-edged, impatient arrogance, his new dramatic distinction bringing the attention of actress Ruby Raymond (Olivia Darnley, politely brazen in red hat and dress) as an easy alternative to Sheila’s struggle for an equal relationship.
Only separation gives space for her to start writing again. And that’s eventually compromised by biology and social expectation. The points are more simply structured, presented with more open bitterness than later Coward would allow. But Catherine Hamilton’s Sheila ably humanises the young playwright’s idea, passing from open happiness through the tension-defying smiles of early marriage, to the resolution of experience mediated through intelligence. Unlike the marriage, the re-uniting is an affair of necessity, devoid of optimism.
Federay Holmes Olive signals lesbianism in hairstyle, clothes and swagger, but her free, world-roaming spirit shows deep concern for Sheila when she views the wreckage of her married friend’s career. Her lifestyle is a liberated contrast to orthodoxy, as are the mocked latter-day bohemians Naomi and Edmund, defying convention by living together, but more cosily connubial than the married.
And Heather Chasen’s stolid servant is magnificent. Quietly mumbling, she knows her place and stands her ground, suggesting her past in a sentence or disapproving of others’ lifestyle in a sideways glance. Coward was no Ibsen, and Sheila is no Nora but Luscombe reveals the new playwright as an unexpectedly earnest young man.
Olive: Federay Holmes
Sheila: Catherine Hamilton
Keld: Gregory Finnegan
Naomi: Kathryn Sumner
Edmund: Steben O’Neill
Burrage: Heather Chasen
Ruby Raymond: Olivia Darnley
Director: Tim Luscombe
Designer: Chrystine Bennett
Lighting: Hansjorg Schmidt
Sound: Matt Downing. Tim Luscombe
2006-12-12 10:42:23