THE WOMAN WHO COOKED HER HUSBAND.

London

THE WOMAN WHO COOKED HER HUSBAND
by Debbie Isitt

New Ambassadors Theatre
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu & Sat 3pm
Runs 1hr 55min One interval

TICKETS 020 7369 1761
020 7413 1771 (24hr No booking fee)
www.theambassadors.com
Review Timothy Ramsden 19 September 2002

A grotesque parade, dignified by the physicality of direction and strength in the trio of performances.Subtlety isn't the key here. Everything's louder or more garish than life. Or so we must hope. The characters remain incomplete, their psychologies not an issue. The plot would hardly please next door's doyenne, Agatha Christie, whose Mousetrap originally filled the Ambassadors before decamping to the neighbouring St Martin's. Yet, as director, Isitt gives her script the rip-roaring cartoon qualities on which it thrives: speed, simplified outlines, and strong colours.

Ken, middle-aged and you'd think with nothing going for him, has deserted wife of 19 years Hilary for slim young bride Laura. But though she's ace in bed, she can't do a decent egg and chips to save his stomach. So Ken's life becomes a duplicitous huff and puff between the lurid green of Hilary's culinary paradise, and Laura's vivid red bed-heaven. No wonder, caught between them, life's a nightmare red socks and green jacket just don't make for a healthy balance.

Given the glimpses of double domestic hell Isitt serves up, relentlessly self-obsessed Ken gets such a roasting from his two wives you'd think his fate at a celebratory meal round Hilary's - merely being ragouted, consumed and eased into the sewage system with the aid of some laxatives (fortunately for the delicately-stomached, Isitt doesn't stage that far on) - would be a relief.

However angry, assertive Laura and Ken stuck 3 years together and why she shows shafts of sympathy for him, is not clear. There's always the sex, we're told, but the one early but of simulated coition we see is joyless maybe not emission impossible, but clearly scoring dismally high in the can't get no satisfaction league.

Yet Donovan manages to suggest a more generous side to Laura, just as Attwell pulls back vocally on occasions, to give at least some lighter shading to Ken's relentless nastiness.

Alison Steadman's skill for blowing a moment into caricature then filling it with reality is consistently to the fore. It's fun, and who knows, it could be almost as liberating for some as it is for the newly discovered sisterhood of Hilary and Laura in the final sequence of aptly enough theatrical overkill.

Hilary: Alison Steadman
Laura: Daisy Donovan
Kenneth: Michael Attwell

Director: Debbie Isitt
Designer: Robert Jones
Lighting: Phil McCandlish
Projection: Gary Tanner

2002-09-20 00:06:35