THERE CAME A GYPSY RIDING. To 3 March.
London
THERE CAME A GYPSY RIDING
by Frank McGuinness
Almeida Theatre To 3 March 2007
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 3pm 21, 28 Feb 2.30pm
Audio-described 24 Feb 3pm
BSL Signed 28 Feb 7.30pm
Captioned 13 Feb
Runs 2hr 5min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7359 4404
www.almeida.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 January
Performances and direction almost save the play.
This play opens with a young woman ironing. And it might be called ‘Look Back in Anger’ as a family returns from modern metro Dublin to their origins on the wild Irish coast - evocatively represented in the wraparound impressionistic hillscape Robert Jones provides, torn off at the bottom and hanging in the air as a fairy-like land surrounding the reality of the small family home.
There are several contrasts made with Dublin; the 2 Irelands rub against each other as the nuclear family return to this place of an earlier bereavement. And meet with the relative who stayed behind. Bridget may not be the central character, but she’s by far the most interesting. Frank McGuinness mixes pragmatism and unreality in her, suggesting someone from the indigent fairy-folk.
Eileen Atkins gives wonderfully fluid expression to Bridget’s 2 sides as she talks of seeing her head walking separate from herself, or undercuts such talk with down-to-earth debunking. The obscenities peppering her speech have a natural ease.
Unlike the rarer swearing of the bereaved mother, Margaret. A literature lecturer who teaches Keats’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ but has only heard a nightingale’s song on record and can’t see why Keats fussed about it, she’s maddened by grief into a return to the illogicality of a world of curses and spells.
If that seems too neat, it is, though Imelda Staunton manages almost to conceal that it’s so. The play's over-neat throughout, including the ‘Start’ and ‘Finish’ signalled by Bridget singing the title folksong. Characters talk with conscious awareness they’re in for an emotional purgation: “It’s started”; “It isn’t over yet”. But McGuinness doesn’t bring the experience to life. These are not people going through an emotional bloodbath; they are playwright’s voices delineating a scenario.
Michael Attenborough marshals his fine cast as best he might. Aidan McArdle makes a sense of character out of next-to-nothing, Elaine Cassidy manages to renew the sense of individuality for a time at each appearance, and Ian McElhinney copes tactfully with a mainly reactive role. Staunton and Atkins are supremely fine. But the experience remains dramatically sterile.
Bridget: Eileen Atkins
Louise: Elaine Cassidy
Simon: Aidan McCardle
Margaret: Imelda Staunton
Leo: Ian McElhinney
Director: Michael Attenborough
Designer: Robert Jones
Lighting: Paul Pyant
Sound: Paul Arditti
Movement: Lynne Page
Dialect coach: Penny Dyer
Assistant director: Rachel Bagshaw
2007-01-26 00:26:13