WHEN HARRY MET SALLY.
London
WHEN HARRY MET SALLY
by Nora Ephron adapted by Marcy Kahan
Theatre Royal Haymarket To 4 September 2004
New times from June:
Mon-Thu 8pm Fri 5.30pm & 8.30pm Sat 5pm & 8.30pm
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Thu & Sat 3pm
Runs 2hr 15min One interval
TICKETS: 0870 901 3356 (booking fee)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 23 February
It started out a film and it should have stayed that way. In fact, it pretty much has.There's something humbling - or liberating about knowing that if the next few paragraphs were crammed with eviscerating criticism and consistently sharp wit (no promises) they wouldn't dent by one the number of tickets sold for this updated reworking of a 1989 film.
The screamed delight at Sally's faked restaurant orgasm (fortunately, if curiously, the other tables are single-sex parties), the approval of Harry's Oklahoma karaoke (both end with Hollywood-smart comic clinchers), the sheer weight of audience relief when the pair get to bed, the red heart-shaped balloon floating on stage pre-show, set the tone. This is West End theatre as back-row double-seat cinema-going, something to feel good to.
From the start Sally and Harry charm us. Alyson Hannigan ladles it by the kilogram smile, taking the barb off her compulsive tidiness. Luke Perry oozes charm through sceptical cool. Both would be insufferable if less good-looking and charming - an odd couple to make Neil Simon's apartment-sharers seem data-matched by comparison. But they are good-looking. And so charming.
They've certainly come up with a charm to dispel the idea that theatregoing's for the elderly. Here, filling seats at West End prices, is a lively, youthful audience, well-behaved, healthy, able to control their mobile phones (not a cough, not a beep) yet when the houselights are up, enjoying themselves, calling, laughing, across the circle, between circle and stalls.
Loveday Ingram's production doesn't help convince this play works without the sense of continuity and development cinema gives. Its inevitability's strung out with manufactured, smart-talking complications designed to intensify gratification through delay, fanciful diversions failing to disguise, or give insight into, the ever-predictable conclusion. These two reach a greater understanding of themselves without ever really travelling towards it. It makes a not very long play seems endless. Or charming.
Ultz's oblong front-stage stage aperture suggests cinema, while attempts to give external scenery movement leaves, snow looks as if someone's raided a store of screen-savers. Film scores, too, in the interpolated black-and-white interviews of how long-married couples met. It's in developing the central characters, emotional crisis replacing psychological development, the thing falls apart.
Sally: Alyson Hannigan from June Molly Ringwald
Harry: Luke Perry from June Michael Landes
Joe: Kevin Collins
Marie: Sharon Small
Jack: Jake Broder
Helen: Elizabeth Jasicki
Ira: Richard Teverson
Ensemble: Natasha Diot, Cleo Johnson, Peter Swander
How We Met Couples:
Patricia Leventon & Gordon Sterne
Liza Ross & Michael Reynolds
Valerie Colgan & Don Fellows
Maxine Howe & David Barnaby
Anita Wright & John Sterland
Pat Starr & Glenn Beck
Richard Alleman & Stephen Lester
Kate Beswick & Chuck Julian
Earlene Bentley & Mel Taylor
Mary Ellen Ray & Peter Banks
Director: Loveday Ingram
Designer: Ultz
Associate designer: Robin Husband
Lighting: Nigel Edwards
Sound: John Owens
Music: Ben Cullum & Jamie Cullum
Projection design: Jon Driscoll
Movement: Mike Ashcroft
2004-02-24 08:14:20