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Closet opens on family secrets
Blowing away secrets of the past: Maureen Lipman as Ellie and John Bowe as Billy. Pictures: Alastair Muir Daytona Birmingham Rep **** ELLIE and accountant husband Joe are a
retired Jewish couple in New York whose consuming interest is ballroom
dancing. Life is comfortable and gentle paced, with the
usual matrimonial bickering wrapped around waltzes and quicksteps -
until Billy arrives. Billy is the brother who no one has seen for 30
years and brings with him not just one but two life changing secrets;
the first, the cause of his unexpected visit, the second, the reason for
his unexplained departure. Oliver Cotton's three hander is wordy,
perhapReview of Daytona at Birmingham Wes too much so, with Billy
relating his stories in what appears to be the minutest detail. In act one after setting the scene between our
happy couple we have the clash between Billy and his brother Joe. The second act it is, in ballroom terms, an
excuse me as Elli and Billy clash before all three come face to face
with their relationships as we approach the final curtain. It is all words with long narrative descriptions
which in lesser hands would have become tedious but this was a cast that
could probably have made a reading of the Road Traffic Act
tolerable. John Bowe gives a performance it is a privilege
to watch as Billy, the estranged brother, who arrives late at night in
the dead of winter in an ill fitting suit, with no socks and wearing a
garish Hawaiian shirt carrying enough Chinese take-way for a formation
dancing team. A sure case of care in the community if such a
thing exists in Brooklyn, but as his story unfolds so does his sanity –
we discover the family eccentric has as many marbles as the rest, he
just plays the game differently and we are left to question what we
would have done in his shoes – with no socks of course – or at least
challenged to understand what he has done.
More explanation would perhaps be too much of a
spoiler but Billy arrives having either done the best - or the worst
thing in his life while on his regular winter holiday with his wife in
Florida. He re-enters the world of Ellie and Joe with
Maureen Lipman superb as the Jewish housewife, already, with common
sense laced with a side order of sarcasm and occasional wit, in dealing
with the now two men in her life. Bit Billy has opened up old wounds and
her pain and emotion as the return forces her to confront her own past
are palpable. Harry Shearer gives us a slightly hen-pecked and
careworn Joe, who “dances like a madman” if he misses out on sleep. Standing up to Elli is nigh impossible for him,
but brother Billy? That is a challenge he is happy to face as he
provides shelter with an unsympathetic ear, perhaps because he already
knows Billy's secret of 30 years ago. Shearer incidentally is perhaps best known for
his voices in The Simpsons where he is Mr Burns, Smithers and Ned
Flanders, while his collaboration with Chrisopher Guest saw him as Derek
Smalls, the bassist in rock send-up Spinal Tap, and Mark Shubb in the
folk mockumentary The Mighty of Wind. The trio weave a somewhat long-winded story into
something which is not only believable but interesting with twists and
nuances along the way. We have Joe with the accountants ordered mind,
reliable and dull, while Billy is compulsive, exuberant and
unpredictable and then Elli, strong on the outside but with a past
weakness which still gnaws at her. David Grinley has kept up a good pace on a nice
1980s set from Ben Stones although there does seem to be a dispute about
the date having been told we are talking about 40 years after the end of
the war in one breath and then we are told that it is 1996 in the next. Billy talked for a long time in Act 1 but surely
not 10 years. Sound was a bit of a problem at the start but the
balance was quickly sorted to settle down into an absorbing evening
enjoying some fine acting from a top-notch cast. To 26-10-13. Roger Clarke
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