THE SECRET RAPTURE.

London

THE SECRET RAPTURE
by David Hare

Lyric Theatre
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Thu 3pm & Sat 4pm
Runs 2hr 20min One interval

TICKETS: 0870 890 1107
Review: Timothy Ramsden 27 November

Taken all-in-all, a successful night out for the emotions under cover of play-of-state ideas.This is the fourth time I've seen The Secret Rapture and the first time I've enjoyed it. The reason, I think, is that Guy Retallack rightly plays it for what it is, an essentially simplistic tale of right and wrong, disguised with complicated curlicues of detail. Love the heroine, righteously hate the villainness, laugh at her sidekick. What more's wanted for a moral blood-and-thunder night out?

At its Lyttelton Theatre premiere the play was taken for a rather profound exploration of moral survival - though good gets pretty well terminated by the nearly-good - and political analysis. Well, more people live better lives than anyone here, while, by my reckoning, there's as good politics discussed any non-football night down the Dog & Duck. It's no more cliched than the 'Dog', but no less neither.

Subsequent productions (Salisbury and Chichester in my experience - it probably did seem radical there and there) also treated it as a significant piece, though neither dared the schmaltzy conclusion the original director tacked-on.

Now, thankfully, the story of Isobel who is benevolent not wisely but too well, can be told for what it is. The ever-attractive Jenny Seagrove - an actor who radiates natural pleasantness as few can do - doesn't hide the struggle between intelligence and her overwhleming kindness, or the fatal consequence of having no chance to choose your moment for getting tough.

But it's hardly the cruel, cold world of greed-is-god capitalism that does for her. The play's full of creaky improbabilities (just try relinquishing a business partnership with no more than a note dropped through the door. Even buying a gun can't be that easy for a good guy without criminal connections), yet it's hard to take sister Marion as the cause of Isobel's downfall.

Belinda Lang gives her a full-blooded conviction as junior Tory minister (backed up by the bonus of Melanie Gutteridge's assistant, on-the-make with mouth and body, first-class degree no bar to a shallow being, blonde villainy to counterbalance Isobel. Immaculate acting of a sell-your-soul-for-a-bite-of-this-bitch cardboard characterisation).

From the moment Marion's introduced with the equivalent of cloak-swirling villainy - sneaking in to steal a ring from the corpse of her and Isobel's father - Lang fills the character with self-justified confidence.

Peter Egan could do with equal credibility as her Christian-businessman husband. It's not convincingly written (consider the Christian types in Hare's Racing Demon, an interesting discussion statement on Anglicism that's been ludicrously over-rated as a play), but an actor of Egan's stature could provide the necessary authority.

Guy Retallack's direction should have been sharper here; Tom must believe he's behaving in a godly way even as he does dirtily acquisitive deeds. And the actor convince us of Tom's belief. If he's to represent this sector of society, not be an easy laughing-stock type, that is.

Earlier scenes could do with tidier detail among people reacting to others' speech; actors seem to be inventing flickers of business to fill a void, rather than contributing to an overall flow.

Liza Walker's not the dream casting she was for Patrick Marber's Closer, but she catches the self-absorption in the women's young, alcoholic step-mother. It's the apparently virtuous who come off worst; Simon Shepherd's business-partner/lover remains iill-focused, though it's hardly Shepherd's fault. The character fills a plot need but has little reality.

Overall, Retallack has the rightr idea - which is not to treat ideas in the play with more than the slender topicality they can bear; instead, go all out for a hiss-and-boo ride, smacked-off with an elegiac end. Quite edge-of-seat, if not white-knuckle, stuff.

Isobel Glass: Jenny Seagrove
Marion French: Belinda Lang
Tom French: Peter Egan
Katherine Glass: Liza Walker
Irwin Posner: Simon Shepherd
Rhonda Milne: Melanie Gutteridge

Director: Guy Retallack
Designer: Robert Jones
Lighting: Oliver Fenwick

2003-11-30 13:59:54