THE REAL THING. To 26 February.
Northampton
THE REAL THING
by Tom Stoppard
Royal Theatre To 26 February 2005
Mon-Sat 7.30pm no performance 14 February Mat 19, 24,26 February 2.30pm
Audio-described 15 Feb
BSL Signed 22 Feb
Runs 2hr 15min One interval
TICKETS: 01604 624811
www.royalandderngate.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 10 February
Dreary revival of a fine Stoppard.It's sad a theatre with the blooming reputation of Rupert Goold's Northampton Royal should move towards a year-plus refurb closure leaving memories of this clunking production.
In The Real Thing Tom Stoppard comes to closer-than-ever-before quarters with love and the stuff of human relationships while providing a witty discourse on art, taking a thwack at the dull political plays in vogue during his early career.
Playwright Henry sums up the author's view in a speech about the cricket-bat: apparently simple, actually intricately designed to fulfil its purpose. Henry's answering his wife Annie's charge that good' writing is a conspiracy of the educated middle-class elite.
She's an actress and Henry's second wife. Stoppard throws in their first-marriages' break-down, plus a false-start scene from Henry's play, later echoed in the writer's life; art isn't just past experience rehashed.
Such stuff needs careful handling for its mix of wit and feeling to cohere. While Matthew Lloyd Davies' over-emphatic acting at the start might just be excused as a deliberately mediocre performance-within-a-performance (each phrase so illustrated the shape of the whole is lost) there's little to excuse the dire playing later between Sara Griffiths (ever depending on a high-energy gaze and the same few vocal cadences) and her young co-actor (unless their appalling rehearsal of a Glasgow 'Tis Pity She's A Whore is an attempted sideswipe at the Citizens' on a very-off night).
Only Alexander Hanson's Henry and Jessica Lloyd's contained Charlotte bring their characters to life; their track-record and inadequacies elsewhere suggest this is tribute to their individual judgements.
I spent most of the first half staring at a drinks cabinet placed stage front if directors sat in their theatre's side seats some designers wouldn't work again. (Incidentally, a drink poured in one location remained on this cabinet when it's in a completely different scene). I moved upstairs after the interval and found myself puzzled by the side-view of some tall entrance or piece of furniture I've no idea what it was, or why it was there; symptomatic of a production that, mishandling a fine play, is not the real thing at all.
Annie: Sara Griffiths
Henry: Alexander Hanson
Charlotte: Jessica Lloyd
Max: Matthew Lloyd Davies
Debbie: Ellie Beaven
Billy: Oliver de la Fosse
Brodie: James Michie
Director: Gareth Machin
Designer: Becky Hurst
Lighting: Paul Dennant
Assistant director: Alan Caig Wilson
2005-02-12 13:20:14