THE WEATHER. To 30 October.
London
THE WEATHER
by Clare Pollard
Royal Court (Jerwood Theatre Upstairs) To 30 October 2004
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Sat 4pm
BSL Signed 14 Oct
Runs 1hr 30min No interval
TICKETS: 020 7565 5000/020 7565 5100
www.royalcourttheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 11 October
If this is promising drama, it's making a very big promise.This autumn the Royal Court's Genesis Project offers dramas from the theatre's Young Writers Programme given full productions in the Theatre Upstairs. Clare Pollard's contribution throws a full panoply of human misery on stage. There's ecological paranoia (heavy coats, flippers, goggles and gas-mask hanging by the door). Urban terrorism - bombs in shopping malls - is reported throughout. Though teenage Ellie's mother survives, despite being a shopaholic.
These objective things are generally well integrated as emanations of the loathings and disgust in this initially scrubbed-white, cleaner-cleaned room, its oversized furniture diminishing the people who use it. Another such emanation is the destructive poltergeist which soon emerges. In Ramin Gray's production this character is the Unseen Hand', a black-covered figure out of oriental theatre manipulating and throwing objects, spraying obscenities across the walls.
Economic meltdown finally brings a concentration on the central duel. The less essential characters have disappeared Ellie's vapid boyfriend, Maria the practical maid, even Jonathan Coy's harassed and ineffectual father - and the battle's focused on teenage Ellie and her Gail, emphasising the deep-held resentment Ellie feels for her mother.
Helen Schlesinger's Gail continues to drink wine and eat smart cheese off the floor, determinedly consumerist amid poverty. It brings her daughter's aggressive resentment into the open. After the sharpness and expostulations that have filled the stage before, truth comes in an impressively quiet, taut conclusion with the adversaries eyeball-to-eyeball, and literally at knifepoint.
Maybe Ellie should be the central character, but the monstrous Gail is a commanding role. Schlesinger's bravura performance sweeps the stage with a compulsively restless dissatisfaction, itchily aware of her physicality, parading it in front of Ellie's boyfriend even as she seems to throw a protective cloak over her daughter. The ever-youthful mother from Hell, her bright manner and confident surface conceal her real state no better than her clothing hides the labels which identify it as another assault on the credit cards.
It was a metaphor, Ellie says at the sharp point of ultimate revelation. So is the play, but with a startling reality beautifully fleshed out by this production and its main performances.
Ellie: Nathalie Press
Bob: Jonathan Coy
Gail: Helen Schlesinger
Maria: Mai Soteriou
Frank: Alex Robertson
Unseen Hand: Grace Willow
Director: Ramin Gray
Designer: Ultz
Lighting: Ultz, Gavin Owen
Sound: Emma Laxton
Movement: Sarah Beard
Company voice work: Patsy Rodenburg
Assistant designer: Jeremy Daker
2004-10-13 10:07:38