THE TWELVE POUND LOOK/THE TINKER'S WEDDING/PLAYGOERS/SHAKES v SHAV. To 23 June.
Richmond
THE TWELVE POUND LOOK
by J M Barrie
THE TINKER’S WEDDING
by J M Synge
PLAYGOERS
by A W Pinero
SHAKES v SHAV
by G B Shaw
Orange Tree Theatre To 23 June 2007
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Tue 21.30-pm & Sat 4pm
Runs 2hr 10min One interval
TICKETS: 020 8940 3633
www.orangetreetheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 9 June
Catchable survey of dramatic variety around a century ago has a couple of winners.
Summertime, and, as every year, the season’s two Orange Tree trainee directors come out from the assistant director shadows to present half an evening apiece. Usually, that means a one-acter each, but as coda to the theatre’s ‘Shaw and His Contemporaries’ year, there’s a quadruple-bill of the kind of short plays which used to be part of an evening’s theatre entertainment. Some of the pieces are better-known than others, but it’s the probably least familiar which makes the strongest impact.
Popular late-Victorian dramatist Arthur Wing Pinero (who wrote on till after the First World War) was one of Shaw’s bete-noires. Both a social-problem dramatist and farce-writer, Pinero’s in definite comic mode with Playgoers, where a recently-married woman is so happy to have decent servants at last, she proposes sending them to the theatre as a treat. Her husband’s doubtful, but not so much as the playgoing beneficiaries, who sit around in a mix of pique and incomprehension. They are indeed an uppity lot once outside their regular employment.
Kate Lock, a picture of mean malice in the last Orange Tree show Nan, has a deliciously assertive way as Mrs Hackett, making her point while ensuring Katie McGuinness’s unkempt, nervous Evelyn stays in her silent, semi-concealed position (a beautifully comic version of the relationship between Lock and McGuinness’s Nan characters).
With fine work all round, Daisy Ashford’s Beech Croft quietly adding mayhem as the ‘phone keeps ringing and Stuart Fox as the ever-keen outside-servant determined to get an in on the visit, Helen Leblique’s production is a detailed delight. As is her well-played revival of Barrie’s neat anecdote about male bombast and female independence.
Henry Bell has a tougher task. The Tinker’s Wedding provides Synge’s usual swirl of Anglo-Irish language. Performances here tend to be carried by its tide rather than clarifying story and character. Shaw’s brief contest between himself and Shakespeare was doubtless of interest to the nonagenarian playwright. The actors give it a go, with comic sound effects for each blow and buffet, but its Punch and Judy knockabout reveals it as the puppet-play it was meant to be.
The Twelve Pound Look
Harry Sims: Stuart Fox
Lady Sims: Katie McGuinness
Tombes: Paul O’Mahony
Kate: Daisy Ashford
Director: Helen Leblique
The Tinker’s Wedding
Sarah Casey: Amy McAllister
Michael Burn: Dudley Hinton
Mary Burn: Kate Lock
Priest: John Paul Connelly
Director: Henry Bell
Playgoers
Ernest Dorrington: Paul O’Mahony
Norma Dorrington: Emily Rothon
Mrs Hackett: Kate Lock
Evelyn Platch: Katie McGuinness
Beech Croft: Daisy Ashford
Worringham: Amy Neilson Smith
Trinder: Amy McAllister
Gale: Stuart Fox
Director: Helen Leblique
Shakes v Shav
William Shakespeare: Dudley Hinton
George Bernard Shaw: John Paul Connelly
Director: Henry Bell
Designer: Jude Stedham
Lighting: Leanne Simmonds
Voice work: Luan de Burgh
Fight director: Philip D’Orleans
2007-06-12 08:41:07