THE WALTZ OF THE TOREADORS. To 4 August.
Chichester
THE WALTZ OF THE TOREADORS
by Jean Anouilh translated by Ranjit Bolt
Minerva Theatre In rep to 4 August
Mon-sat 7.45pm Mat Thu & Sat 2.15pm
Audio-described 6 July 7 July 2.15pm
Runs 2hr 45min One interval
TICKETS: 01243 781312
www.cft.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 21 June
If you want to see this play, there’s no time like the present.
Between reliving his late 19th-century military campaigns, General St Pe sits writing to the French President in 1910, confident of a recall in the event of war. Meanwhile, the General rarely steps beyond his garden, being bound to an unloved, invalid wife who calls to him from the next room with her suspicions of his sexual infidelity.
He’d had earlier, disease-bringing flings, but only now does his real love, Ghislaine, suddenly reappear, 17 years after they fell for each other during the title dance. Her arrival reinforces his hatred of family life. Every manifestation of it, including his two ugly daughters - especially them – revolts him.
Jean Anouilh concocts from this situation a 5-act dance of love and suspicion. The doctor attending Amelie becomes involved, as does the General’s amanuensis Gaston, who, in the tradition of Moliere and his classic comedy predecessors, turns out to have an unsuspected identity.
It is, though, a long play to hold interest in such characters. St Pe is self-indulgent, wishing one moment to be the young Lieutenant who was fancy-free, then insisting on his updated title of General. And the variations on patterns of memory, desire and tedium seem to take a very long time to be worked through.
Both translator Ranjit Bolt and director Angus Jackson seem aware of the difficulty, shifting the production towards open comedy rather than rose-tinted emotionalism. There’s an occasional demotic note to the dialogue and the quick reactions of stylised comedy keep appearing, though these show a clumsiness in Anouilh’s handling of stage business. Only Nicholas Woodeson exempts himself, ambling good-humouredly along.
Peter Bowles’s General is too blustery at times, but no-one manages more pointedly the dry inflections through which he injects severe distaste into terms of affection towards his wife. As that wife, Maggie Steed has just the penultimate scene, in her bedroom, to make an impression and she does, with her grand emotional demands, rising in her bedclothes like a devouring monster from the deep.
Designer Ashley Martine-Davis provides a handsome, vaulting set, as grand in manner and humanly empty as the play itself ultimately proves.
General St Pe: Peter Bowles
Amelie: Maggie Steed
Gaston: Al Weaver
Estelle: Rebecca Cooper
Sidonie: Siobhan Hewlett
Doctor Bonfant: Nicholas Woodeson
Mlle Ghislaine de Ste-Euverte: Catherine Russell
Eugenie: Joanna Brookes
Mme Dupont-Fredaine: Anna Farnworth
Cure: Julien Ball
Pamela: Polly Brunt
Director: Angus Jackson
Designer: Ashley Martin-Davis
Lighting: Peter Mumford
Sound/Music: Adam Cork
Choreographer: Benny Maslov
Fight director: Terry King
Assistant director: Derek Bond
2007-06-25 00:00:07