THE SHY GAS MAN. To 5 March.
London
THE SHY GAS MAN
by Gill Adams
Southwark Playhouse To 5 March 2005
Mon-Sat 7.30pm
Runs 2hr 5min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7620 3494
Review: Timothy Ramsden 26 February
Tower-block terror reveals lives battered to bits.It was fascinating to arrive at Southwark Playhouse fresh from Laura Wade's Colder Than Here. Both are family plays darkened by the shadow of death. But Wade's smooth finish reflects her middle-class family's crippling emotional embarrassment. Gill Adams' drama also mixes laughter and seriousness, but works on a more visceral plane, matching its characters' jagged-edge lives.
No-one knows how to do things properly. Mother-in-law Stella and son-in-law Tony scream hatred and pain (often at each other) while daughter/wife Sheila shouts with her family, yet is more reflective with Darren, the gasman (and only person competent at a job) she meets at poetry classes.
Showing their alienation, husband and wife adopt new names, Sheila meeting Darren as Sarah, Tony taking on the moniker Bruce, after martial arts man Bruce Lee. Paul Popplewell gives Tony a vicious danger, yet despite gun and knife, threats and shouting he never actually hits out. His pain's evident, as is Sheila's. Their secret gradually emerges, while violence and blood is expressed through a turkey Tony brings home in September.
He wants to make it always Christmas for her, but doesn't know how. Nor is it his birthday when a cake appears. His attempt at celebration with balloons is pathetic.
Adams' first act propels us through these lives, though despite initial concern over the smell of gas (soon evaporating from the dialogue) the Gas Man remains shadowy. By the interval there's little more to explore within the family relationships. Here, the action splits, both in the writing and in Garry Cooper's fluent traverse production.
While mother- (a blowsily forceful Elizabeth Elvin) and son-in-law rub each other yet more raw with taunts and threats, Sheila and Darren go atop the tower block in more oblique scenes that reveal a more poetic approach to life (Laura Lonsdale and Dominic Coplenso achieving a quietly sustained tension). At least they find space for imaginative speculation, though the what if' quietness leaves him teetering on the edge. It's the play's quiet consummation that Darren is the agent completing Sheila and Tony's ultimate repose by fixing' the gas in a way she never intended.
Sheila: Laura Lonsdale
Stella: Elizabeth Elvin
Tony: Paul Popplewell
Darren: Dominic Colenso
Director: Garry Cooper
Designer: Chloe Lamford
Lighting: Ian Saunders
2005-03-01 12:11:41