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by Alan Bennett, directed by John Shooter

Precisely Peter Productions, Campbell House Museum, Toronto

November 7-23, 2014;

November 3, 5, 7 mat, 8 mat, 10, 12, 14 mat, 18, 20 & 21, 2015

“Bennett’s Very British Inferno”

First thing to know: Talking Heads is not about the new wave band of the same name of the 1980s.  Second thing to know: Talking Heads is a wonderful evening of theatre.  The show is made up of three monologues each lasting about a half hour written by acclaimed British playwright Alan Bennett, most famous perhaps as the author of The Madness of George III (1991) and The History Boys (2004).  In 1988 and 1998 Bennett wrote a collection of twelve monologues for BBC television known under the collective title Talking Heads.  The monologues along with a thirteenth from 1982 have since been staged in various combinations.  Just last year those lucky enough to see it got a taste of these wry, tightly written pieces in the form of Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet, a monologue first broadcast in 1998.  The three that director John Shooter has chosen are altogether much darker and more unsettling than Miss Fozzard, but all three are riveting and superbly performed.

Each of the three monologues Shooter has chosen is a kind of mini-mystery.  As we listen to the speakers we begin to notice a disparity between the façade they would like to present and the facts of their story.  The characters emphasize certain details of the story and de-emphasize or even omit others until we see a pattern emerge.  All three endings have twists that in two cases make the characters’ stories even more disturbing that we thought they would be.

Shooter’s triple bill begins with The Outside Dog from 1998.  On entering the dining room of the Campbell House, we discover Naomi Wright playing the central character Marjory, who is obsessively cleaning items and placing them on a set of shelves.  Marjory’s chief complaint is her husband’s dog who barks whenever her husband is not at home.  Since the dog is quiet when he is home, her husband doesn’t believe her complaints about the barking. 

Marjory tells us that she has had to train her husband, who works in a slaughterhouse, to a level of cleanliness that she can put up with although the level he finds acceptable is still far below hers.  As Marjory tidies, mops and folds laundry she becomes increasingly tense while she speaks and we try to figure out what is driving her obsessive compulsive behaviour.  Is her marriage unhappy?  Does he find her husband’s work objectionable?  Or is it because there is a serial killer on the loose in her neighbourhood?  I can say no more except that only at the very end to we realize why Bennett has given this monologue its specific title.

We descend to the kitchen of the Campbell House for the second monologue, Playing Sandwiches from 1998 set in a park.  Jason Gray as Wilfred is raking leaves as we enter.  Wilfred’s story at first seems idyllic.  He tells us about how he loves working outdoors and even though he doesn’t like some of the things he has to clean up, he enjoys keeping the park tidy.  His employer is happy with his work except that he can’t find any records to verify the past work history on Wilfred’s resumé.  Wilfred enjoys seeing children playing in the park and gets to know a young girl named Samantha, whose mother even lets Wilfred look after Samantha when she is too busy.  The title refers to a game Samantha likes to play with Wilfred of putting one hand on top of the other.  Already made uneasy by what happens in The Outside Dog, we hope that the pattern we see emerging is wrong since Wilfred seems like such a humble, harmless guy. 

For the final monologue, A Lady of Letters from 1988, we ascend to the ballroom on the second floor where Alex Dallas as Irene Ruddock is seated in an armchair staring out the window.  We find she is observing with disapproval the new people who have moved in across the way.  Irene, or Miss Ruddock as she prefers to be called, now living alone since her mother died, has taken it upon herself to be a one-person health, safety and morality monitor for the entire neighbourhood.  For every infraction she notices – a hair in her sausage, men smoking outside a crematorium, a faulty step, dog poop near Buckingham Palace – Miss Ruddock fires off a letter to the appropriate authorities or more if they do not respond quickly.  But when Miss Ruddock starts to badger the police about the situation she thinks she sees going on across the street, it seems she has gone too far. 

Some critics consider Talking Heads Alan Bennett’s masterpiece and each of the monologues Shooter has chosen is a perfect gem of the form.  To perform them Shooter has assembled a cast of actors all of whom I wish we would see more frequently on stage in Toronto.  In The Outside Dog, Naomi Wright subtly shifts the emphasis from Marjory’s outward activity to her inward agitation that incrementally grows worse throughout her scene.  The tension she creates between what is said and unsaid is almost unbearable. 

Jason Gray, whom I’ve previously seen only in comic roles, is extraordinarily moving in the serious role of Wilfred.  From the first he gives Wilfred a feeling of background anxiety that doesn’t match the calmness of his speech or the pleasures of work that he speaks of.  It is this expert ability to communicate two emotions at once that makes us look for the real story behind the one he tells us.  The innocence that Gray brings out in Wilfred makes the ending of Playing Sandwiches as heartbreaking as it is disturbing. 

The Lady of Letters provides some comic relief from the intensity of the previous two monologues.  Alex Dallas perfectly captures Bennett’s extremely dry wit.  Dallas’s Irene has no idea that the more she confides in us the more ridiculous she makes herself look.  The higher the moral ground her Irene stands on the lower our opinion of her.  Yet, at the same time Dallas suggests another, more sympathetic side to this busybody.  Dallas helps us see that writing letters of complaint is virtually Irene’s sole contact with other people and establishes a feeling of connectedness to counter a loneliness she can’t admit. 

In these three monologues out of thirteen, Shooter has chosen those with related themes.  All three concern crime and punishment.  All three speakers cherish the all-white England of the past and have not come to terms with the diversity of the present.  All three speakers are obsessed with tidiness, whether indoors like Marjory, outdoors like Wilfred or in other people’s lives like Irene.  While Shooter’s choice makes for a satisfying evening it also does not quite suggest how wide the range of moods is in Bennett’s Talking Heads series.

Shooter’s idea of staging the monologues in the Campbell House is brilliant.  In moving from room to room where each of the speakers is ensconced, we feel like Dante moving from one circle to the next in a kind of domestic, very British Inferno, where the inhabitants are only too glad to unburden themselves of their stories.  In some ways, at the end you feel you are leaving a house haunted by the spirits of the unintentionally guilty.

With such rich material, so well directed and performed, all theatre-lovers should seek out Talking Heads.  You will be so impressed that you are bound to hope John Shooter and Precisely Peter Productions will give us more.   

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a copy of the Stage Door review of Talking Heads in 2014: The cast and creative team are the same.

Photos: (from top) Naomi Wright as Marjory; Jason Gray as Wilfred; Alex Dallas as Irene. ©2015 Vincente Marana.

For tickets, visit http://talkingheads2.brownpapertickets.com.