WE HAPPY FEW.

London

WE HAPPY FEW
by Imogen Stubbs

Gielgud Theatre
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu & Sat 3pm
Runs 3hr 5min One interval

TICKETS: 0870 890 1105 (24 Hrs Booking Fee)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 14 July

Band of wartime sisters making for a happy many in the audience.Imogen Stubbs is a middle-aged woman who pretends to be other people. That is, she's an actor in her forties (her programme note reveals), and that's how one character in her debut play describes another. These characters mainly are, or become, actresses in the wartime 1940s.

This play's received a critical drubbing. True, if the author weren't a leading actor, married to its star director, any light of day this script might have seen would have been far less grand, with little chance of this tip-top-notch cast. The schadenfreude factor must be high in places.

But it does have superb direction and acting, and despite faults, fulfils several first play requirements. It's written from a subject fascinating to the writer, and is set in the theatre world she knows inside-out. For 30 years the Osiris Players toured classic plays to schools and elsewhere as an all-woman company. Stubbs' Artemis Players similarly tour wartime society.

The title, from Henry V's pre-Agincourt band of brothers' speech, is well-chosen. Stubbs shows how diverse individuals come together and despite personal tensions, create hope through art. It's easy to forget how much aspiration and planning for post-war society there was between bombings; war gave Britain birth certificates for both the Welfare State and extended education.

There are faults. The modern-day opening lacks impact. Stubbs should listen to her Mayor who is thankful for shortish second acts. After the whirling fun of assembling company and opening night's Macbeth, act two shoots through the war while characters stand around revealing an assortment of predictable personal concerns, reaching its treacliest in a death-bed reconciliation which tips from feelgood to tear-jerking.

Yet, while passages might make the sophisticated cringe (Trevor Nunn should have risked silence across the cornflakes and insisted on cuts), this long play has the grip of popular drama.

Among the fine cast, Juliet Stevenson's Hetty has a soaring intensity, passionate yet reining sentimentality in tight. Marcia Warrens smiling, ever-active Flora is a magnificent creation, family revelations bringing depth behind the brightness. And Kate O'Mara has fun as the hard-bitten old pro, handling her melting centre tactfully.

A Lady/Gertrude: Rosemary McHale
Young Man/Joseph: Adam Davy
Hetty: Juliet Stevenson
Flora: Marcia Warren
Reggie/Leonard/Hilary/Mayor/Newsreel Commentator/Bert: Paul Bentley
Ivy/Sharon Poulet: Cat Simmons
Jocelyn/Henrietta Trend/Usherette: Caroline Blakiston
Charlie: Patsy Palmer
Rosalind/Maureen: Emma Darwall-Smith
Helen: Kate O' Mara

Director: Trevor Nunn
Designer: John Napier
Lighting: David Hersey
Sound: Colin Pink
Composer: Steven Edis
Choreographer: Henry Metcalfe
Costume: Elise Napier
Fight director: Malcolm Ranson
Film producer: Julian Napier
Associate director: Cordelia Monsey

2004-07-15 10:45:50