THE YEARS BETWEEN. To 6 October.
Richmond
THE YEARS BETWEEN
by Daphne Du Maurier
Orange Tree Theatre To 6 October 2007.
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mar Sat 4pm & 13,20 Sept (+ discussion).
Audio-described 18 Sept., 29 Sept 4pm.
Runs 2hr 25min One interval.
TICKETS: 020 8940 3633.
www.orangettreetheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 8 September.
Cosily uncomfortable drama in near-successful revival.
It’s 1942, and Diana Wentworth’s husband is missing believed killed. Neighbouring farmer Richard Llewellyn, ruggedly good-looking and dependable, is clearly fond of her, and she of him. And her son Robin takes to Llewellyn, who teaches him to fish with his missing dad’s rods.
The inevitabilities happen, including the supposed-dead husband’s return days before Diana and Richard are due to marry, though fortuitously they’ve only told people they’re “going to Scotland”. Meanwhile, Diana has become an MP, uncontested in her husband’s seat. She’s successful. Transformed from the supportive, home-making wife, she works with progressive zeal on the 1944 Butler Education Act.
It's 1945 when Michael Wentworth returns, looking for his wife, and their old familiar life. And it’s here, a third-in, that problems begin with a play which clearly sees how war opens-up new opportunities and makes new demands as social stability falls away, yet is less surefooted on more distant matters.
Du Maurier’s own experience and that of friends went into The Years Apart, and its World War II setting accentuates what can happen whenever people suddenly live separate lives. It’s no accident Diana works on the Butler Act, a major civil achievement in a war where forthcoming battles were planned alongside future society.
Her husband’s return, overwrought, bad-tempered and frustrated at the new world being forged, rings less true. If Michael had been forced to trek across occupied Europe, his nerves might well have torn to shreds. But he went on a deliberate behind-lines mission and doesn’t seem to have been up to it.
Things aren’t helped by Mark Tandy’s externalised performance. This music-loving book-collector hardly seems a likely special operations man, though stranger people have come forward. But he doesn’t handle books as would a collector finding his prize volumes damaged; more importantly his tetchy outbursts and oases of calm don’t cohere.
A significant matter, it doesn’t absolutely damage Caroline Smith’s production, which otherwise spiffs splendidly along, Karen Ascoe combining the sense of a devoted middle-class wife with an emerging awareness of her own individuality as she realises her present and their past have grown poles apart.
Robin: Oscar Addis/Dominic Chelsom/Tristan Pegg.
Nanny: Gabrielle Lloyd.
Richard Llewellyn: Michael Lumsden.
Diana Wentworth: Karen Ascoe.
Vicar/Venning: Richard Hollis.
Sir Ernest Foster: Timothy Carlton.
Vicar’s Wife/Miss Jameson: Linnie Reedman.
Michael Wentworth: Mark Tandy.
Director: Carolins Smith.
Designer: Sam Dowson.
Lighting: John Harris.
Assistant director: John Rolph.
2007-09-11 14:48:55