YOUNG EMMA. To 21 December.
London.
YOUNG EMMA
by W.H. Davies adapted by Laura Wade.
Finborough Theatre To 21 December 2003.
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Sun 3.30pm.
Runs 2hr 5min One interval.
TICKETS: 020 7373 3842.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 14 December.
Intriguing view of a once well-known poet's concealed life, skilfully staged with fine performances.
W.H. Davies, poet of the countryside, sought a good woman as companion. So, it's unsurprising his memoir, basis of Laura Wade's play, should have been controversial. Here's Davies, as World War I moves to its close, living in one of London's mean back-alleys, and, for want a companionable woman, setting up a cramped home with several highly volatile females.
Anna Ledwich, having already shown Vida intimidating her fiancée-employer Jonathan Cape with an insistence on becoming one of his firm's readers, goes on to embody these quite terrifying co-habitees for David Cann's grizzled, wooden-legged Davies, now in his early 50s.
There's Bella, unhappily married to a soldier, French Louise, who combines a mademoiselle's passion with the determined efficiency of a Prussian hausfrau, and the fateful, anonymous one-night stand Woman with Silk Stockings drunk, hysterical, completing in the sobered morning the sex omitted the night before. Ledwich's late, housekeeping roles are scarcely less fearsome.
So it's a relief when she's replaced in Davies' street-meetings with Margot Molinari's smilingly pliant Emma. Not without a sudden streak of steel where money's concerned, Emma becomes Davies' companion and wife, even while he believes she's brought him venereal infection. Molinari makes clear what Davies saw in Emma: a happy disposition in his unsatisfied world.
Life doesn't provide the shaping drama needs, but Wade creates a structure through the occasional emergence of the action's frame Cape and Vida arguing over Davies' attempt to withdraw his frank memoir provide a mirror of Davies' difficulties with women.
She handles the other problem - memoirs see things from the writer's perspective - by making the authorial view wittily evident. Davies stops the action, electing to play different moments in his life, with other characters obediently switching mood and response.
Tamara Harvey's Bright Angel company provide as strong a production as their rare Tennessee Williams revival at the Finborough last summer. Gabriella Csanyi-Wills miraculously creates a three-room set on the tiny stage, aptly dominated by a bed, while also suggesting in its cramped compartmentalisation the nature of Davies' temporarily urban life. Will Barton brings a brisk humour to his various characters.
Jonathan Cape/Will/Dr Lyndon/Dr Brook/Policeman: Will Barton.
W.H. Davies: David Cann.
Vida/Bella/Louise/Woman with silk Stockings/Mrs Larkins/Shopkeeper: Anna Ledwich.
Emma: Margot Molinari.
Director: Tamara Harvey.
Designer: Gabriella Csanyi-Wills.
Lighting: Emma Chapman.
Sound: Ben Evans.
Music: Owen Leech.
Assistant director: Laura Dunton Clarke.
2003-12-17 11:05:59