TOO TRUE TO BE GOOD To 26 September.
London.
TOO TRUE TO BE GOOD
by George Bernard Shaw.
Finborough Theatre above Finborough Brasserie 118 Finborough Road SW10 9ED To 26 September 2009.
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat & Sun 3pm.
Runs 2hr 30min Two intervals.
TICKETS: 0844 847 1652 (24hr no booking fee).
www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk (reduced full-price tickets online).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 5 September.
A production that makes it more than good enough.
From a 1975 Royal Shakespeare Company revival, through Shared Experience’s 1986 tour to the London Fringe in 2009; it might seem downhill all the way for Bernard Shaw’s 1932 comedy. Yet this Finborough revival does well by the play.
In fact, once some of the mature actors are more secure with their lines than on the first Saturday, this will be as good a revival as you might hope to meet. Its younger characters, at the play’s centre, are uniformly fine. A couple of them literally, being army men: Tai Alexander as a T E Lawrence variant, reliably outdoing the officer class, and James Hogg as a philosophical sergeant, reversing usual sexual roles by insisting that if young Sweetie wants his body she’ll have to take his Bible and Bunyan-reading mind too.
Shaw revelled in reversing expectations. Here he examines the deprived rich through mollycoddled Miss Mopply, overdosed by an overly fond mother (cue act one satire on doctors), her illness and its accompanying microbe (the ‘Monster’) cast off when a burglarious couple sting her into activity.
The best joke here has the young women move from tightly-wrapped England to bare-legged ease abroad while the men stand around talking of sex in terms of Higher and Lower Centres (it was one subject where Shaw’s plain speaking kept stayed coy).
Olivia Lumley leaps from sickness to the fighting fit, though later, holding herself hostage for parental ransom money, some of her character’s thoughts seem less than fully digested. Not so Emily Bowker’s working-class Sweetie, her face a series of puzzled, disbelieving and sceptical expressions, her forthright views expressed with the directness of Eliza Doolittle in flower-girl mode. Or Alex Blake’s secret clergyman enjoying alike his scheming ideas and propounded ideals
Shaw flings his ideas around - as the Monster says, the last two acts are more discussion than action, though humour’s sprinkled across the central act especially. Moments resound from the 1930s Depression to modern crunch-time, while the author’s faith in Stalin’s Soviet Union is transparent. Still, once the old match the young, Sarah Norman’s production will be a splendid revival.
Monster: Steven Alexander.
Miss Mopply: Olivia Lumley.
Mrs Mopply: Jenny Lee.
The Doctor: Graham Seed.
Sweetie: Emily Bowker.
Aubrey: Alex Blake.
Colonel Tallboys: Roger Braban.
Private Meek: Tai Lawrence.
Sergeant Fielding: James Hogg.
The Elder: James Clarkson.
Director: Sarah Norman.
Designer: Ruth Hall.
Lighting: Peter Harrison.
2009-09-07 12:38:59