THE SHELL SEEKERS. To 29 November.

Tour

THE SHELL SEEKERS
by Terence Brady and Charlotte Bingham from the novel by Rosamunde Pilcher

Tour to 29 November 2003 Spring tour to 20 March 2004
Runs 2hr 30min One interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 2 September at Northampton Royal Theatre

Strong, sympathetic storytelling with humorous touches is the strong point of this adaptation.This is a straight-down-the-line, know-where-you-are adaptation. Though there are surprises like a deft narrative jump later filled in as grandmother Penelope looks back from the 1980s to her romantic youth. And if the plot depends on a coincidental resemblance of two characters, living half a century apart, it's an excusable device: coincidences do happen.

The story contrasts art's endurance and harmony with the unpredictability (arthritis destroying a painter's career at a key moment) and friction of life, especially within the family. There's a tendency to simplify. Basically, family is bad, other people good (with only a hint of their own family misery). Yet, romantically, lost love is mellow-hazed, while new young lovers seem set for happier days ahead. Time, if not a sequel, will tell.

There's a slight old-fashioned feel to David Taylor's elegant, sympathetic but slightly stolid production. Stephanie Cole's older Penelope is plonked foursquare in a corner to watch stiffly as her youth's re-enacted. Bits of realistic business are brought in rather obtrusively (imaginary golf-strokes from bossy Nancy 's quiescent husband during an indoor tirade, for instance).

Young Antonia and Danus, especially, seem to be creating mood through an ill-digested array of facial expressions as if no-one's told them what's going on but they realise some thing ought to be.

Generally, acting's reliable, though characterisation in the script tends to the 2-dimensional. Art Dealer Brookner's sympathetic, so is housekeeper Ellen; children Noel and Nancy are self-seeking, seeing their grandad's final, innovative painting 'The Shell Seekers' only as a potential gold-mine.

Only successful magazine executive Olivia shows a more sympathetic side. Once Karen Drury has melded the smilingly self-centred moments and the more considerate ones into a coherent personality, hers will be an even finer performance.

But Stephanie Cole's Penelope is rightly the centre-piece. Strong-minded, perceptive, yet as barbed as her offspring when required, she brings beautifully-controlled detail to her responses and a reserve of deep feeling to the memories that inform her current wisdom.

Simon Higlett's receding golden frames and painted-panels decorate scenes from this world of a painter's descendants; they are given elegiac elegance by Jack Thompson's finely-sculpted lighting.

Penelope: Stephanie Cole
Olivia: Karen Drury
Nancy: Veronica Roberts
Noel: Ian Shaw
Lawrence: Timothy Carlton
Roy Brookner: Paul Chapman
Ellen: Jacqueline Clarke
George: Martin Wimbush
Antonia/Penny: Katherine Heath
Danus/Richard: Nicholas Osmond

Director: David Taylor
Designer: Simon Higlett
Lighting: Jack Thompson
Sound: Clement Rawling

2003-09-03 13:17:58