UNDER THE BLUE SKY. To 20 September.
London.
UNDER THE BLUE SKY
by David Eldridge.
Duke of York’s Theatre To 20 September 2008.
M0n-Sat 7.45pm Mat Thu & Sat 3pm.
Runs 1hr 45min No interval,
TICKETS: 0870 060 6623 www.underthebluesky.co.uk (£3 transaction charge – cheaper than by ‘phone).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 28 June.
Trio of relationships examining amatory terrain.
A lot of clouds have to pass before the sky is blue in a play that tells us the truth about love. It’s three ‘panels’, each involving two teachers, could simply stand side by side. But relationships take place in time, and playwright David Eldridge gives a sense of forward motion through scattered details about people we’ve met, through the move from youth to maturity and an overall sense of development from love’s early stages to something like long-enduring stability.
Each coupling, so to speak, has a different tone. Nick’s emotionally blind indifference to the love of his admittedly wine-fuelled colleague, is followed by lustful fantasy as a desperate disguise for a relationship between the staffroom’s least charismatic man and the “slapper” who can’t keep anyone else.
Both pairs try to rewind “the last half-hour”. The third scene, where Anne is aware how much older she is than her lover Robert, is built round an act of memory stretching back to the Great War. But it’s another example of desire that’s not love. Love may live under a blue sky; but it’s hard achieved and can, instead, prove fatal.
Anna Mackmin’s production is spot-on with about half these characters. There are a couple of people who, by simple class aspects of manner and accent, it is hard to see being appointed in private schools, in Essex or elsewhere.
Chris O’Dowd creates comedy from Nick’s emotional blindness, but it takes some thinking to imagine how his relationship with the loving Helen has got this far. It must have been her devotion, and the wine she amply drinks, that’s played the trick for he only calls on her love when her desperation endangers him. Catherine Tate gives a largely one-note, raucous performance that works for about five minutes, before it becomes difficult to see how Michelle survives in a private school.
And Nigel Lindsay cannot match the emotional detail and complexity Francesca Annis brings to Anne, someone balancing common-sense and emotional-pull.
Yet Annis, with Lisa Dillon and Dominic Rowan, give finely-nuanced performances, and Eldridge’s play about love is itself well worth seeing.
Nick: Chris O’Dowd.
Helen: Lisa Dillon.
Michelle: Catherine Tate.
Graham: Dominic Rowan.
Anne: Francesca Annis.
Robert: Nigel Lindsay.
Director: Anna Mackmin.
Designer: Lez Brotherston.
Lighting: Mark Henderson.
Sound: Paul Arditti.
Choreographer: Scarlett Mackmin.
Assistant director: Kate Lonergan.
2008-07-30 12:41:42