WOLVES AT THE WINDOW. To 21 June.

London.

WOLVES AT THE WINDOW
by Toby Davies after Saki.

Arcola Theatre (Arcola 2) 27 Arcola Street E8 2DJ To 21 June 2008.
Mon-Sat 8.15pm.
Runs 2hr 5min One interval.

TICKETS: 020 7503 1646.
www.arcolatheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 31 May.

Sharp-edged stories sharply staged.
Under the name Saki, H H Munro provided late Victorian and Edwardian adults with mordant stories as antidotes to prevalent moral sentiment. And it’s no surprise the stories chosen by Toby Davies, craftily unified by recurring names, should include ‘The Storyteller’ which transfers the idea to children’s tales.

On a train journey, a woman fails to keep her children quiet with a glutinously moral story, so a traveller tells them of a child coming to a sticky end because of her preternatural virtue. The mother’s shocked but he points out that, unlike her, “at least I kept them quiet for ten minutes”. The words return, disembodied, at the end of the show, a summary of writer and adapter’s purpose.

Saki’s targets are the self-confident middle-classes, particularly the wealthy. Coincidence upsets a smug gentleman’s outsmarting of a woman’s scam to get money from him. A society woman fools a rival by claiming she’s shot a fearful tiger. She succeeds; one of several cases where Davies drops one story’s resolution into another. But there’s a steep price for keeping her companion quiet about the unspectacular reality.

Animals often come off badly. A pet dog is snuffed-out, revealing a fraud used by a husband against his wife. Worst-off is Tobermory, the intelligent cat whose knowledge of family behaviour makes him a threat when he learns to talk.

There are wolves and a window. The latter, from Saki’s ‘The Open Window’, shows yet another person misled. But Saki’s human society is wolvish and exploitative. Supremely, 'The Interloper's hits at social pride, using typically fanciful family names, and gives the wolves their chance to bite back.

Thomas Hescott’s direction points-up the theatrical and macabre in Saki, using simple props (a hat-stand standing-in for a tree). It’s a limited world, and a whole evening of bite-sized stories doesn’t make an entirely satisfying meal, but the four actors (requiring the occasional sex-change from Saki’s characters) are suitably individual. Gus Brown’s straight-backed seriousness contrasts Jeremy Booth, smiling even at his most callous, while Anna Francolini’s brisk sharpness and Sarah Moyle’s cut-glass forthrightness set each other off finely.

Cast: Gus Brown, Jeremy Booth, Anna Francolini, Sarah Moyle.

Director: Thomas Hescott.
Designer: Maureen Freedman.
Lighting: Richard Howell.
Sound/Music: Tim Digby-Bell.
Movement: Dean Burke.
Assistant director: Sophie Lifschutz.

2008-06-01 13:27:06