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Theatre Reviews
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After the Dance by Terrence Rattigan, directed by Christopher Newton Shaw Festival, Royal George Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake July 5-October 5 2008 by Christopher Hoile, Principal Reviewer for Stage Door
"When the Party’s Over"
Terrence Rattigan’s first non-comic play, “After the Dance”, opened on June 6, 1939. By September 3 of that year Britain was at war with Germany. Though the coming war is never mentioned in the play, it conveys, despite its moments of hilarity, an atmosphere of impending doom that the characters work hard not to face. This is one of those obscure plays that the Shaw Festival is so expert at bringing to vivid life. The casting, acting, design and direction are impeccable.
Rattigan’s immediate subject is the so-called Bright Young Things who grew up in the wake of World War I, too young to serve in that conflict, but who grew up convinced that the “War to end all wars” proved that there was no inherent meaning or morality in the world and that a life of frivolity was the only proper response to so much destruction. This intentional emphasis of triviality over seriousness was, of course, merely a pose. By the late 1930s the Bright Young Things were no longer young and seemed not quite so bright, especially to the more serious generation that followed. Rattigan’s main characters are of the older generation who try to prolong their youth in a perpetual haze of drink, parties and drugs. For them to slip into seriousness would be to reveal they are old and had become that worst thing in their vocabulary, a “bore”.
The main representatives of this monied, idle older generation are would-be author David Scott-Fowler, his wife Joan and John Reid, a parasite on their hospitality whose presence is suffered because he makes them laugh. Peter Scott-Fowler, David’s ward and secretary, and his girlfriend Helen Banner, stand in for the younger generation. The main problem is that Helen is not in love with Peter but with David and he is in love with her. Though the others had tried, only Helen’s influence convinces David, who had been on the verge of drinking himself to death, to give up alcohol. She takes it as her mission to save him from himself. Rather than seeing him and his friends revel in the hollow echo of the past, Helen thinks only she can give David a new start in life, that he can give up his worthless history of a minor Italian nobleman and write the important work he had once envisioned. Helen’s plan to marry David will disrupt two other lives, but she discounts their pain since she thinks Peter is young enough to get over his loss and that David and Helen never really loved each other.
Newton draws the kind of highly nuanced ensemble acting acting from the cast for which the Shaw Festival is renowned. As David, Patrick Galligan creates a fascinating portrait of a man who ought to be happy but is being gnawed away by an unidentified sense of dissatisfaction. Helen may think she has found its source and knows its cure, but as Galligan plays it we can see that David is subject to a general existential anomie beyond Helen’s comprehension. Galligan shows that David wants to believe in Helen’s vision of him and that he really could start again while at the same time suggesting that the fervent attention of a younger woman is more important to him than her plans for his reformation. As Joan, Deborah Hay is absolutely superb. Initially, we take her for the frivolous person she plays to other people, but as her drinking increases and as the truth of David’s relationship with Helen come out, Hay divests Joan of layer after layer of the superficialities she has habitually encased herself in. The moment when Helen tells Joan that David wants to divorce her is shattering. Hay shows us every minute development as the terrible truth slowly sinks in and overwhelms her.
It is great to see Neil Barclay play such a juicy role as Reid. Layers of self-irony imbue his every word. His Reid knows he’s the court jester of the household but he is also fully aware of his pointless existence. Like a Shakespearean fool it falls to Reid to tell truths to others about themselves and this Barclay does with an impressive gravitas that suggests that Reid has taken on a pose of wit to hide the pain of wisdom. Peter is a fine part for Ken James Stewart who finally gets a large enough role to show what a fine actor he is. Peter sees through the self-delusions of David but Stewart shows us the pressure building up inside him between his duty to David as his guardian and employer and his disdain for his style of living. When David takes away his girlfriend he is justifiably furious. In smaller roles Jay Turvey has a key part to play as Arthur Power, one of the older generation who has seen through their folly and has the symbolic job of cleaning windows. Lisa Horner is rather over-the-top as Julia Browne, the most obnoxious example of a Bright Young Thing grown old and surviving on booze and gossip. Claire Jullien makes a brief apperance as the hopped-up, nearly out-of-control Moya Lexington, another Bright Young Thing gone bad, while Jennifer Phipps is very funny first as the hapless Maid at the Scott-Fowlers’ party and later as Miss Potter, David’s dour replacement for Peter as secretary.
William Schmuck has designed a Georgian drawing room for the Royal George stage so lovely one would happily move in. His costumes always enhance the characters and he indulges his sense of humour in the outlandishness of Julia Browne’s get-ups. As director Christopher Newton may have been a last-minute substitute for the ailing Neil Munro, but this play is directly up his street. Of a 2002 production Guardian critic Michael Billington wrote, “I am now utterly convinced that this is one of Rattigan's finest studies of the English vice of emotional repression”. Newton is a master in training his cast to communicate as much through what they don’t say as through what they do. Rattigan may have writing about a very specific time and place in 1939 but the play has a curious relevance now when the public is more willing to wallow in the trivialities of entertainment news than engage itself with the more important issues of war and environmental destruction. As Rattigan’s play shows so powerfully the desire to be continually entertained at the expense of confronting the serious issues in life ultimately results in a terrible awakening. Let's hope for more Rattigan at the Shaw in future seasons. ©Christopher Hoile
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Fuente Ovejuna by Lope de Vega, directed by Laurence Boswell Stratford Festival, Tom Patterson Theatre, Stratford June 27-October 4, 2008 by Christopher Hoile, Principal Reviewer for Stage Door
"¡Viva España!"
 Sara Topham & Jonathan Goad ©David Hou “Fuente Ovejuna” is the first play of Spanish Golden Age ever produced by the Stratford Festival. Spanish Golden Age drama developed simultaneously with Elizabethan and Jacobean drama and like its English counterparts is one of the greatest periods in world drama. For that reason alone, “Fuente Ovejuna” is worth seeing. What’s even better, a British specialist in the Spanish Golden Age, director Laurence Boswell, has given the play a new translation and his production has made it into one of the most exciting plays at Stratford this season.
Félix Lope de Vega Carpio (1562-1635), along with Tirso de Molina (1571-1648) Calderón (1600-81), is one of the three great masters of Spanish Golden Age drama. In his own time he was viewed as a prodigy of nature said to have written over 1,500 plays along with important works in prose and poetry. Of these 1,500, 500 ascribed to him have survived of which 300 so far, still an astounding amount, can definitely be attributed to him. “Fuente Ovejuna”, written and produced about 1611-13 and first published in 1619, is based on an historical incident. In 1476 the villagers of the town of Fuente Ovejuna (“the sheep’s spring”) rebelled against their feudal overlord Fernán Gomez de Guzmán and violently killed him to avenge the series of atrocities his had committed in the town. The villagers pledged their allegiance to King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile, whereas Guzmán, a Commander of the elite knights of the Order of Calatrava, had aligned himself with King Alfonso of Portugal and Princess Juana of Castile, their competitors vying for control of the Iberian peninsula.
Lope de Vega is very different from Shakespeare in his portrayal of the general populace. A glance at the Jack Cade rebellion in “Henry VI, Part 2”, the mob in “Julius Caesar” or the population of Rome in “Coriolanus” reveals an elitist view of the people as giddy, changeable, easily swayed entity that can be led any way a strong leader chooses. In “Fuente Ovejuna” Lope takes the completely opposite approach by presenting the townsfolk as the incorruptible collective hero of the play. Rebellion against authority was a dangerous topic for any playwright but here Lope has the historical excuse that Guzmán has aligned himself against not just Fuente Ovejuna but against the eventual uniters of Spain to whom the townspeople pledge allegiance. Unlike Shakespeare, the story of kings and queens is placed firmly in the background while the lives of the common people take the foreground.
To provide an example of Guzmán’s villainy, Lope focusses on the love of the peasant Frondoso for Laurencia, the mayor’s daughter. She and her friend Pascuala have a low opinion of men from what they’ve seen in the village and especially from the Commander. Frondoso hopes through his steadfastness to win her love, but she is also being pursued by Guzmán. When Guzmán tries to force himself on Laurencia in the forest, Frondoso takes up the Commander’s crossbow and orders Guzmán away. By this action Frondoso finally wins Laurencia’s heart. In a dramatic scene Guzmán interrupts their wedding celebration to arrest Frondoso for future execution and to kidnap Laurencia. For the villagers this is the final straw. In remarkable parallel scenes first the men and then the women meet urged on by Laurencia who has escaped from Guzmán to take arms against the Commander and his guards, to storm his fortress and kill him to free Frondoso.
The production features a cast of 29, many in several roles, all well chosen and giving the kind of ensemble performance in a unified acting style one finds so rarely in plays at Stratford. Jonathan Goad is excellent as Frondoso showing the earnest young man’s frustration at Laurencia’s disdain and joy at her eventual approval. Laurencia is one of the juiciest roles Sara Topham has been assigned and it’s a pleasure to see how she rises to the occasion. The emotional arc from a proud peasant girl to the battered woman who has barely escaped Guzmán’s clutches is a great one and her harangue of the male villagers who sat by and did nothing is immensely forceful and impressive. If there is a flaw it is in the performance of Scott Wentworth, who can’t quite convey the depths of absolute evil that is Commander Guzmán. Guzmán does tell what he thinks are jokes but Wentworth tries to wring laughter from them when in fact further depressing evidence of the man’s misogyny and utter disdain for the lower classes. Stephen Kent as the Grand Master of the Order of Calatrava blusters when he should seem most sincere. David W, Kelley, as Guzmán’s henchman Captain Flores fails to find the right tone for his elaborately sartorial description of Guzmán in battle but is otherwise effective.
Many directors might be tempted to assign the comparatively minor roles of Ferdinand and Isabella to minor actors. Luckily, Boswell does not make that mistake and gives then to Geraint Wyn Davies and Seana McKenna. This is very important, for though their stage time may be small their impact is great. They represent the ideal of a Spain ruled by love and justice that they on a grand scale and the villagers on a smaller scale are fighting for. The great impact that Wyn Davies and McKenna make in they short appearances provides a touchstone for morality in the entire play.
There are other standouts throughout the cast. Mengo, acted with a suitable dry wit by Robert Persichini, is the most comic character in the play but even he is beaten for trying without success to save the peasant girl Jacinta, a fiery Lindsay Thomas, from rape by Guzmán and his men. The gripping finale hinges on whether he will hold out under torture. Lope thus even gives the “clown” role significant depth that Persichini captures perfectly. James Blendick gives Esteban the town mayor exactly the right level of gravitas. Nigel Shawn Williams as light-hearted Barrildo provides an excellent foil for Mengo and Frondoso while Severn Thompson as Pascuala well performs the same function for Laurencia.
Peter Hartwell’s design focusses entirely in costumes to give a sense of time and place. Though the villagers eventually trade in their rather pretty outfits at the start for broken-down outfits after their battle, their initial appearance is perhaps too spotless and tidy at the beginning to suggest a class of people who are poor and oppressed. On the mostly bare stage, Michael J. Whitfield wide array of lighting techniques establishes time of day and significantly influences changes of mood. Edward Henderson’s incidental music and the live playing of musicians Graham Hargrove and Kevin Ramessar area pleasure throughout.
In short, don’t miss this great play that presents such a different view of the common people from what one finds in Shakespeare’s historical plays. In 2004-05 the Royal Shakespeare Company staged a highly successful Spanish Golden Age season with plays by Cervantes, Lope de Vega and Sor Juana de la Cruz that proved just how varied and vibrant this incredible rich treasury of drama is. Let’s hope that the powerful impact of this “Fuente Ovejuna” encourages the Stratford Festival to continue exploring the fascinating world of Shakespeare’s Spanish contemporaries. ©Christopher Hoile
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All's Well That Ends Well |
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All’s Well That Ends Well
By William Shakespeare
Performed by Juan Chioran, Brian Dennehy, Martha Henry, Jeff Lillico, Stephen Ouimette, Tom Rooney, Daniela Vlaskalic and company
Directed by Marti Maraden
Stratford Shakespeare Festival Production
Festival Theatre, Stratford
June 19 to August 23, 2008
Reviewed by Mary Alderson
Perhaps all does not end not so well
The title of All’s Well That Ends Well is somewhat ironic. This play by Shakespeare does not actually end well at all – in fact, it suffers from a very contrived ending which attempts to make the audience believe that the young couple will live happily ever after, when our instincts tell us otherwise.
All’s Well That Ends Well is one of several of Shakespeare’s works that has been nicknamed the “problem plays” -- the problem being that the play doesn’t fit into one of Shakespeare’s categories. Most of his works can be neatly packaged as comedy, history, tragedy, and romance. Scholars believe that All’s Well That Ends Well was intended to be a comedy, but compared to other works, it is simply not as funny. The humour is rather dark comedy.
The 2008 production of All’s Well That Ends Well at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival has not risen above Shakespeare’s artificial ending. However, a very strong cast has still given us an interesting story with many funny moments.
The King of France (Brian Dennehy) is very ill, when fortunately, Helena (Daniela Vlaskalic), the daughter of a respected physician who is now dead, is able to cure him. As a reward, the King grants her request to marry anyone she wishes. She chooses Bertram (Jeff Lillico), the son of a Countess (Martha Henry) who is Helena’s adopted mother. Bertram is horrified – someone of his high class would not consider marrying a lowly doctor’s daughter, who also happens to be his mother’s charge. The King forces the marriage, but Bertram, being such a snob, declares that he would rather go off to war and face death, then be the husband of the common Helena.
But Helena is determined. She tricks him into marital relations with the help of Diana (Leah Oster), a young woman who has caught Bertram’s eye, assisted by Diana’s mother, the Widow Capilet (Fiona Reid). Once Bertram finds out that Helena is pregnant, and he’s the father, (he vowed this would never happen), he suddenly decides that he will love her and be a good husband. It’s this unbelievable change of heart that makes for a weak conclusion, causing All’s Well That Ends Well to be one of Shakespeare’s less popular plays.
Having said that, the cast that has been assembled for this production should make it very popular with audiences. Dennehy is outstanding as the King, and it’s a treat to watch the two-time Tony award winner command the stage. Dennehy has an impressive list of Broadway credits, several guest-star roles on television, and some fascinating movie credits – the most recent being Ratatouille.
It’s interesting to note that this play was performed 55 years ago in Stratford during the inaugural season under the big tent – with the great Alec Guinness as the King and Irene Worth as Helena. Even more interesting is the fact that Martha Henry played Helena in 1977 as did Fiona Reid in 1982, and now both woman are appearing in the same play again, taking the mothers’ roles. Stratford also presented All’s Well That Ends Well as recently as 2002, with the late William Hutt as the King.
Both Martha Henry and Fiona Reid are excellent as the contrasting mothers. Henry demonstrates her disappointment in Bertram, but somehow gets the message across that he is still her son and she still loves him. Reid, as the poor widow, adds humour when she quickly jumps to take part in a scheme, once it involves money for her.
Vlaskalic as the lovelorn Helena is interesting and does well with the part as it is written. Unfortunately, it is difficult to understand why she wants to marry the pompous Bertram. Oster, as Diana, delivers a fascinating riddle explaining how the “bait & switch” scheme to capture Bertram worked. Unfortunately, Oster is not able to put the necessary enthusiasm into her description.
Jeff Lillico plays the whiney, snobbish Bertram very well. But the contrived ending gets in the way, and it’s hard to believe Bertram could ever love Helena. This is probably more the fault of a missing element in the plot.
The play is saved by comic relief in a hilarious sub-plot. The haughty Bertram has a friend, Parolles, (Juan Chioran) who is even more pretentious. Parolles is a terrible braggart, but the other young lords know he is really a coward. They set him up, pretending that they are the enemy army, capturing him and blindfolding him, just to listen to him capitulate and tell lies. They fake a foreign language and speaking in gibberish, have an interpreter (Randy Hughson) talk to him. They have great fun with the language and actions while Parolles wears the blindfold.
Humour is also added by Lavache (Tom Rooney), a clown-like figure who hangs around the Countess’ home. He slouches about in contrast to Bertram’s and Parolles’ snobbery. Yet he also puts on airs, sitting on the Countess’ sofa with his feet up.
With an interesting, seasoned cast, and a few humourous scenes, the evening was well worthwhile. Unfortunately, we can’t ask Shakespeare just how we are to reconcile the class-consciousness and his lack of a believable conclusion, with the fact that this is supposed to be a comedy. But maybe, Shakespeare meant it to a “problem play”.
All’s Well That Ends Well continues at the Festival Theatre, Stratford until August 23. For tickets, call the box office at 1-800-567-1600 or check www.stratfordshakespearefestival.ca.
Mary Alderson offers her view of area theatre in this column on a regular basis. As well as being a fan of live theatre, she is a former journalist who is currently employed with the Ontario Association of Community Futures Development Corporations.
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Hughie / Krapp's Last Tape |
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Hughie by Eugene O’Neill, directed by Robert Falls Krapp’s Last Tape by Samuel Beckett, directed by Jennifer Tarver Stratford Festival, Studio Theatre, Stratford June 28-August 31, 2008 by Christopher Hoile, Principal Reviewer for Stage Door
"What remains of all that misery?"
A fine double-bill starring famed American actor Brian Dennehy is playing at Stratford’s Studio Theatre. The two plays “Hughie” by Eugene O’Neill and “Krapp’s Last Tape” by Samuel Beckett are superficially quite different. The O’Neill play written in 1942 is in the American realist tradition with a realist set and trappings. “Krapp” is in the European absurdist tradition and is presented with a minimal set and trappings. Both have the theme of a man looking back on his life. In “Hughie” the speaker has a listener on stage. In “Krapp” the man is alone, the listener of a recording of his own younger self. Both, coincidentally, were first performed in 1958--”Hughie” in Stockholm, “Krapp” in London.
 Joe Grifasi & Brian Dennehy ©David Hou In “Hughie”, set in 1928, we meet Erie Smith (Dennehy), aged 59 (revised upwards from 45 in the script), who claims to be a professional gambler but in reality seems to be an errand boy for mobsters who takes the risk of gambling with the money entrusted to him. He returns at 4:00 am after days of heavy drinking to the run-down hotel where for 23 years he has always stayed when in New York. Primary in his thoughts is the death three weeks earlier of Hughie, the hotel’s longtime night clerk. This and much else he tells Hughie’s taciturn replacement Charlie (Joe Grifasi). Erie views Charlie, just as he first did Hughie, as a “sap”, a guy who has followed the norms of society, held a steady job, got married and has children. Erie at first tries to impress Charlie with his flashy lifestyle, free of all ties, having sex with any chorus girl he chooses and absolutely carefree about money. He’s always been lucky he says, except lately ever since Hughie was taken to hospital. It gradually emerges over the the play’s 45 minutes that Erie’s aggressive nonchalance is just a façade. He’s lost money and will be in big trouble with his bosses. But worse, Hughie’s death has reminded him of his own mortality and the emptiness of his life. The glad-handing Erie, in fact, had no real friends except for Hughie, who used to soak up all the bombast Erie gave him about his life and thus made Erie feel important. Erie would clearly like to mold Charlie into another Hughie, but he finds the task difficult.
Dennehy gives a great performance. In his white linen suit and fedora he is a man who still imagines himself young and dapper despite physical evidence to the contrary. Dennehy’s real power shows in the various moments when Erie loses the energy to keep his mask in place, when he lashes out at the decrepitude of the hotel or the unresponsiveness of Charlie when in fact they simply remind him he is putting on an act. Joe Grifasi is wonderful as Charlie, pretty much as comically stone-faced as Buster Keaton, gradually changing from disdain of the drunken, self-important Erie to an interest in him as a character. If there is a flaw with the production it lies with Robert Falls’s direction. The action does not flow smoothly. Several times it seems to come to a dead stop and you wonder how the actors will get the momentum going again.
 Brian Dennehy ©David Hou After intermission designer Patrick Clark’s worn carpet and furniture and elaborate hotel reception deak have been removed and replaced with a simple table and chair against an all-black background. Krapp (Dennehy), aged 69, looking ancient and dissheveled, completely different from the slick Erie, is discovered sitting at the table in a pool of light rapt in thought with only a slight, occasional twist of his lips hinting at disgust. Director Jennifer Tarver allows this portrait of stasis to last so long that viewers unfamilar with the play might begin to fear that nothing more will happen. Finally, Krapp looks at his watch, fumbles with his keys and unlocks the two drawers of his table until he finds his treat, a banana. After enjoying this and, given Beckett’s love of clowns, the inevitable slip on the banana peel, Krapp searches for “box 3, spool 5” among the tin boxes piled on the table. This turns out to be a tape he made thirty years ago, his habit being to record his reflections every year on his birthday.
The rest of the action consists of Krapp listening to the voice of his younger self and commenting through grunts or laughter on what he hears, stopping and starting the tape, fast-forwarding and replaying certain sections. That year on spool 5, Krapp’s mother died and he felt he was finally riding on the “crest of a wave” ready for his life’s great work, glad to have said farewell to love. Krapp scorns all this and fast-forwards through his younger self’s boasting. What he replays is the moment when he was lying in a boat with a woman with whom he had just broken up allowing himself to feel the motion of the boat on the water. For his present birthday Krapp tries to record something but finds he has nothing to say and relistens to his early self describe again floating on the river.
Dennehy again gives a masterful performance, his face flitting from boredom to reverie to disgust. Tarver doesn’t seem to find as much humour in the piece as there is. There is no sense, for example, of Krapp’s sensual enjoyment of the banana and she doesn’t emphasize that Krapp becomes increasingly inebriated after each of his trips to a back room where he uncorks another drink. In general, I found Graham Cozzubbo’s direction of the play starring John Neville for World Stage in 2000 more involving. Tarver has Dennehy simply stare emotionlessly into the distance at the end whereas Cozzubbo had Neville seem to realize with infinite sadness that in breaking with the woman on the boat he had failed to seize his one great chance for personal happiness. Despite this, this is a well-conceived double-bill that brings two unusual plays into fascinating dialogue. It is also a superb showcase for Brian Dennehy, who shows he can be riveting in completely contrasting roles whether as an outgoing talker or a withdrawn listener. If you long to see a great actor prove his mettle in two challenging roles, you need look no further.
©Christopher Hoile
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Dogs Barking by Richard Zajdlic, directed by Michael Moxham Easy Tiger Productions, Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, Toronto July 4-13, 2008 by Christopher Hoile, Principal Reviewer for Stage Door
"Biting"
Here as part of the 2008 Toronto Fringe Festival, Easy Tiger Productions from the UK is presenting the Toronto premiere of the 90-minute play “Dogs Barking” by Richard Zajdlic, best known as a television writer for such shows as “This Life” (1996-97) and “EastEnders” (2006-08). The play from 1999 is a scathing portrait of the yuppies of the 1990s whose materialism has suppressed any sense of morality. The result is people who ruin their lives just when they’re beginning.
The focus of the play the relation between Neil (Fanos Xenofos) and Alex (Lisa Sheerin). They used to live together as a couple and even took out a joint mortgage on a flat, until Neil, thinking he was moving up in status, became involved in an affair with his boss Caroline and dumped Alex. Now Caroline has dumped Neil and we find him sleeping on the floor of Alex’s flat hoping to worm his way back into her life. Alex, however, has already found someone else, Ben, who is as much a success in business as Neil is a failure. Neil’s only hold over Alex is the joint mortgage and he suggests that he and Alex sell the flat and split the difference, that she buy him out or that he continues to live there. To force her hand, he gets his dim-witted friend Ray, whom everyone calls “Splodge” (Mark Philip Compton), to help move Alex’s things out and his in. When Alex and her sister Vicky (Maddy Lewis) catch them in the process, the war between the two escalates to violence.
The set by Rebecca Channon is minimal as is typical of Fringe shows, so that when Neil packs up Alex’s things there is basically nothing left on stage a table and two chairs. This places the emphasis entirely on the acting, which under Michael Moxham’s incisive direction, is excellent in drawing multilayered performances from the cast. One reason why the vicious, expletive-filled struggle between Neil and Alex is fascinating is that both actors manage to show that beneath the anger and hurt they still love each other. Alex has moved on and is trying to put the chapter with Neil behind her. Neil, however, wants to turn back the clock and, in his own misguided way, is using their last legal connection as a way to create an emotional connection, ignorant that this only alienates her more. Xenofos makes Neil a person you would never want to meet, yet he shows us that desperation underlies even his worst actions. Sheerin creates a very warm, sympathetic presence despite her harshness towards Neil because she lets us see Alex wishes she did have to take such a stance with him.
Compton’s Ray functions mostly as a kind of comic relief--slow, out of shape, too subservient to Neil. But when we learn of his past failed relationship and when we finally see him stand up to Neil, we realize that that pain and strength were there all along. Vicky would seem to be the only successful one of the four, but she has married for wealth and status, not love, and is now suffering for it. Lewis shows Vicky to be tease and poseur riddled with bitterness but her performance does not match the strong level of intensity of the other three.
The original production at the Bush Theatre in London was presented with an intermission. It a blessing that the constraints of the Fringe do not allow this because it would dissipate the tension that Moxham so carefully allows to build. One of the pleasures of the Fringe is to find such a fine play as this among the 148 offerings and in such a chilling, insightful production. ©Christopher Hoile
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