WHEN THE NIGHT BEGINS. To 3 April.

London

WHEN THE NIGHT BEGINS
by Hanif Kureishi

Hampstead Theatre to 3 April 2004
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Sat 3pm
Runs 1hr 30min No interval

TICKETS: 020 7722 9301
www.hampsteadtheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 17 March

It's on stage but retains the flavour of the page.Bryony Lavery's Frozen focuses on meetings between a mother and the man who had abducted and killed her child. Its form and spare dialogue, with intense, restrained playing made it illuminating, affirmative theatre. So, it can be done.

By comparison Hanif Kureishi's play comes over as a factitious contrivance. Anthony Clark's production and the acting are both fine in themselves but appear as mere exercises because the better they are, the more they seem attempts to overlay the piece's ultimate emptiness.

The subject's slightly akin to Lavery's. A woman visits her step-father in his run-down flat. In a variant on the oft-quoted Godard recipe of a girl and a gun' she produces a knife to slice the old man. He might seem inoffensive, but alongside the prostrate problem he still has a violent streak and the unsurprising revelation guarded by Kureishi as if of high dramatic value about his misbehaviour towards her as a girl leads to a confrontation that's less psychologically convincing than splashily histrionic.

Patrick Donnellan's set condemns Cecil by his run-down lifestyle, with a fridge full of the alcohol that's always fuelled him. Michael Pennington dignifies any part he plays the rich, considered voice, the intelligently purposive movement; this is either a drawback or a constructive tension. Another actor might make Cecil more threatening, less of a dysfunctional old Hamlet, yet might thereby reduce the character to single-strand stereotype.

Catherine McCormack's daughter, wielding the knife but emotionally bruised gives a more conventional notion of her character, yet the emotional fizzes and retreats are well delineated, with a clear sense of childhood experience imprisoning the outwardly successful rich young millionaire widow and artist.

You can see the writer piling on the character points, all rationally used she draws a picture of Cecil, and his home-based abuse is offset by mention of his socialist commitment as a trade unionist helping fellow-workers. But it remains themed backplot rather than connecting with the lives seen in this contrived action (both show a plot-driven carelessness with the knife) in a play where words do the talking rather than bringing people to life.

Cecil: Michael Pennington
Jane: Catherine McCormack

Director: Anthony Clark
Designer: Patrick Donnellan
Lighting: Paul Pyant
Sound: Gregory Clarke

2004-03-20 09:49:28