WHISPERS ALONG THE PATIO by David Cregan. Orange Tree Theatre to 27 October.

London

WHISPERS ALONG THE PATIO
by David Cregan

Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond To 27 October 2001
Runs 2hr 25min One interval

TICKETS 020 8940 3633
Review Vera Lustig 5 October

Inventive comedy of manners that starts promisingly but over-eggs the pudding.Rum title, Whispers Along the Patio (directed by the Orange Tree's Sam Walters in a co-production with Scarborough's Stephen Joseph Theatre): there's nothing hushed about Cregan's writing. A dramatist long associated with the Orange Tree, he's idiosyncratic, playful, a dab hand at coruscating one-liners. Well before the end of Whispers, though, I felt I had been nudged and tickled to within an inch of my life.

Cregan seems to have rummaged around for anecdotal morsels, theatrical in-jokes and bizarre character traits, then cobbled them together into the semblance of a narrative. His dramatis personae represent a variety of theatrical genres: Matthew, the pivot and narrator (whose asides startle his fellow characters) is a retired academic with plenty of snap in his celery. His meddling, sex-starved niece June runs a Help the Aged shop, assisted by camp, socially inept Harold, who hankers after culture and its trappings, and who seems to be in a constant state of unconscious self-parody.

In the more naturalistic corner are Tony, an attractive rat-poison salesman and Tania, a prickly young Macedonian who is a wholly credible mixture of insecurity and arrogance, curiosity and jaded wisdom in Cate Debenham-Taylor's fine performance.

Predictably, Matthew and Tony fight over the beautiful Tania, much to the chagrin of June, whose offer to Tony of, 'Frontal sex, anal sex, oral sex…24 hours a day,' is politely but firmly declined.

June (Jane Arden, relentless and unmodulated in a thankless role) combines sexual rapacity with blinkered right-wing stupidity. When Tania speaks eloquently of life on the embattled edge of Europe, 'Some of the villages are like jungle villages. Nothing in them you would recognise,' June tartly retorts, 'I know what villages are. I've been to Stow-on-the-Wold.'

This pitting of ugly witch against imperilled heroine gives the play a mustiness, a whiff of old clothes that no longer fit.

Matthew: Frank Moorey
June: Jane Arden
Tania: Cate Debenham-Taylor
Tony: Steven Elder
Harold: Jason Baughan

Director: Sam Walters
Designer: Pip Leckenby
Costumes: Christine Wall
Lighting: Kath Geraghty

2001-10-09 23:58:18