THE SHADOW BOX. To 4 March.
London
THE SHADOW BOX
by Michael Cristofer
Southwark Playhouse 62 Southwark Bridge Road SE1 To 4 March 2006
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 3pm
Runs 1htr 55min One interval
TICKETS: 08700 601601
www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 25 February
Yesteryear’s triumph hits the dust.
Set simultaneously in 3 cottages which form a kind of hospice appendix to an American hospital, Michael Cristofer’s 1975 play (it won Pulitzer and Tony awards 2 years later) shows a trio of dying inhabitants visited by those who love, or ought to love, them. Joe’s wife Maggie can hardly bear to be there; their son (an underwritten, or under-directed, role) wanders around with a guitar promising to play for dad, without ever doing so.
Former-wife Beverly (as healthy as anyone despite her chain-diet of bourbon and nicotine) visits classically learned Brian. She spends a lot of time fighting with his live-in boyfriend, saved-from-the-streets Mark, whose love is shown in his patiently counting out pills and in his sympathetic response to Brian’s (offstage) incontinence.
Then there’s wheelchair-bound Felicity (as Brian would know, her name means ‘happiness’, and she is the only character to have survived into old age), attended by daughter Agnes (a ‘lamb’ Brian, again, could say) but always crying out for her missing child.
This is the kind of subject that impresses awards panels, but 30 years on it rings hollow, the characters often seeming manipulated to maximise an emotional response in the audience, rather than being taken through convincing situations where emotional responses arise naturally.
At times the patients face an interviewer. Who he is, or why he should be English, in this American institute, is unexplained. As is the way English-sounding Felicity came by her Deep South daughter Agnes - though anything’s forgivable given Pauline Lynch’s patiently agonised portrayal, looking for hope in a hopeless relationship, where the absent person will always be loved more than the one who’s present.
And, in a cast where the women make more of a mark than the competent men, Lucy Briers breaks out of the play’s box with strength and freshness to express Beverly’s drug-propped existence. If her life seems more interesting than those Cristofer shows, it’s the triumph of the actor rather than an ill-focused production which rarely gives the play’s characters the sharp clarity needed with a play that’s less than it apparently once seemed.
Interviewer: Simon Coleman
Joe: Geoffrey Towers
Steve: Chris Frampton
Maggie: Barbara Drennan
Brian: Gerard Canning
Beverly: Lucy Briers
Mark: Chris Jamba
Felicity: Andree Evans
Agnes: Pauline Lynch
Director: Caitriona McLaughlin
Designer: Elizabeth E Schuch
Lighting: Finnuala McNulty
Sound: Darren Murphy
Costume: Penn O’Gara
2006-02-27 01:04:42