TRIFLES/THE OUTSIDE/SUPPRESSED DESIRES. To 19 April.

Richmond.

TRIFLES/THE OUTSIDE/SUPPRESSED DESIRES
by Susan Glaspell.

Orange Tree Theatre To 19 April 2008.
Mon-Fri 7.45pm Mat Thu 2.30pm (+ post-show discussion) Sat 4pm.
Runs 2hr 15min Two intervals.

TICKETS: 020 8940 3633.
www.orangetreetheatre.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 7 April.

Finely-played rare revivals.
American novelist and playwright Susan Glaspell is flavour of the spring in Richmond, where the second-ever production of her 1922 Chains of Dew is interrupted for a fortnight by these three plays, each around half-an-hour long.

Trifles is anything but trifling. In one way it’s a detective piece. A man’s been found hanged, his wife was beside him in bed. Did she do it? If so, why?

First, male neighbours help the County Attorney investigate, as their wives stand silently by. When the men search for important clues upstairs, the women deduce, though never speak, the truth through domestic details that don’t register with the men. Nancy Crane’s anxiety and Helen Ryan’s shock turning to quiet insistence play beautifully off each other.

There’s an element of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, but far more beside. Every step helps uncover the couple’s relationship, something poignantly evoked as Dan Staniforth’s lighting finally focuses on the widow’s empty rocking-chair.

Trifles has an inevitability few short plays achieve (Synge’s Riders to the Sea is one). Glaspell herself doesn’t achieve it in The Outside. Here again men talk, then women speak, reaching further to the core of existence.

Mrs Patrick, shutting herself off from life, refuses to have a drowned sailor’s corpse in her home. The play’s heart is her talk with Allie Mayo, who breaks 20-years’ silence as she recognises her neighbour sinking as she had done. But, as the winds heard howling softly through the walls in Trifles here blow loudly in the open, there’s little of the other play’s subtle intricacy.

If Suppressed Desires (co-authored with Glaspell's husband) says anything about women, it’s how an intelligence given too constricted a role in society can overdose on ideas of the moment. Henrietta Brewster is funny first as a keen advocacy of Freudian psychoanalysing, then as someone disturbed by its outcome.

Throughout, she’s funny through Ruth Everett’s comic performance: wide-smiling, keen-eyed enthusiasm followed by pencil-stabbing, ever-energetic concern. There’s deliciously inane playing with names. It’s a reminder of the humour, as well as seriousness, in Chains of Dew and a very pleasant contrast to the intensity of Trifles.

Trifles
County Attorney: Gwynfor Jones.
Mr Peters: Alister Cameron.
Mr Hale: Charles Daish.
Mrs Peters: Helen Ryan.
Mrs Hale: Nancy Crane.

Director: Helen Leblique.

The Outside
Captain: Alister Cameron.
Bradford: Charles Daish.
Tony: Gwynfor Jones.
Mrs Patrick: Katie McGuinness.
Allie Mayo: Lisa Armytage.
Dead Body: David Annen.

Director: Svetlana Dimcovic.

Suppressed Desires
Henrietta Brewster: Ruth Everett.
Stephen Brewster: David Annen.
Mabel: Pia de Keyser.

Director: Phoebe Barran.

Designer: Tim Meacock.
Lighting: Dan Staniforth.

2008-04-12 00:35:43