UNTITLED. To 14 March.

London.

UNTITLED
by Lena Farugia.

Finborough Theatre Finborough Road Brasserie 118 Finborough Road SW10 9ED To 14 March 2009.
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat & Sun 3pm.
Runs 1hr 55min One interval.

TICKETS: 0844 847 1652 (24hr No booking fee).
www.finboroughtheatre,.co.uk (reduced full-price tickets online).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 8 February.

A lonely old-age with only the past in front of it.
Pity, if you must, the poor celebrity living a tawdry existence once their time has passed, selling their possessions after fame’s turned sour. With Britain’s establishment - church, state, royalty - against her, divorcee Wallis Simpson had no chance, even when her lover became King of England.

Needing the support of “the woman I love,” Edward VIII abdicated in 1936. Wallis lived on half a century, and fourteen years longer than her husband. Death can be cruel, but so can life.

The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Prime Minister helped push Edward towards his abdication. But Wallis’s real enemy was the new King’s wife. Elizabeth, later the Queen Mother never forgave Simpson for forcing her own husband to become George VI.

So says Lena Farugia’s play, set in the Duchess of York’s twilight years. Shuffled off to Paris with the courtesy title (and shuffled out of Paris when British royalty visited) Simpson lived long beyond the age when anybody really cared about her anyway. Suez and the end of Empire were hard enough to bother about in the days of the Beatles and the EEC, let alone this not-quite-royal whose world had passed by and whose mind was cracking-up.

So, with a butler who’s also a minder, Nichola McAuliffe’s Wallis recalls the 20s and 30s high-life with a waspish force that’s attractive on stage but would have been awful to live with. Patrick Ryecart's Douglas is gravely subservient while being tactfully manipulative, making the most of the one time his polite mask slips. Ryecart switches into a reserved autocracy when showing Edward’s love in the flashbacks that are Farugia’s creakiest device.

In the Finborough's previous production an asylum opened onto Earl’s Court through the pub-theatre’s windows; here Alex Marker’s enclosed set creates a French mansion’s windows, supposedly overlooking a garden, in reality leading the eye to the theatre’s wall, expressing the enclosed world of Simpson’s decline.

By the time Peter Cregeen’s production has tightened in places, and sorted-out its curtain-call, it will ensure Farugia’s play makes as much of a case as is probably possible for the woman in question.

Wallis: Nichola McAuliffe.
Douglas: Patrick Ryecart.

Director: Peter Cregeen.
Designer: Alex Marker.
Lighting: James Smith.
Sound: Matt Downing.
Associate designers: Liz Krause, Georgia Lowe.

2009-02-12 00:22:42