|
|
|
|
|
|
Stars explained: * A production of no real merit
with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not
enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real
life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A
good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely
achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a
great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major
flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic
which lifts theatre to another plane. |
|
|
A slow fuse on history
Marital crisis: Jack Clitheroe (Pete Gillam) heads back to join the insurrection despite the entreaties of his pregnant wife Nora (Lucy Hayton)The Plough and the StarsThe Loft, Leamington Spa **** SEAN O’Casey’s
The Plough and the Stars
is a tough nut for an amateur company to undertake. It is protracted,
patient and slow unfolding, occasionally panic-stricken and frenetic. It
contains a large body of solo leads, all of whom must be credible,
engaging and compelling, and distinctively Irish. It needs skill and insight to sustain interest,
and achieve shifts in mood, anxiety to optimism, loneliness to brief
flurries of cooperation or unanimity. The Starry Plough was the famous flag or banner
originally adopted in 1914 by the Irish Citizen Army, to which the
play’s socialist-leaning military hero Jack belonged, and for which he
re-enlists. A (then) green and yellow flag encompassing the sign of Ursa
Major – seven silver stars, elaborated into a sword-bearing figure - it
resurfaced during the 1916 Dublin Easter Uprising, on which the play
focuses. Leamington’s Loft Theatre has a reputation for
and a knack of achieving just this: tackling challenging, not always
obvious or populist repertoire, bringing out its urgent seriousness and
intensity; and in many respects this O’Casey production by Gordon
Vallins, for years a key force at the Loft in encouraging this mature
approach to amateur drama (The Threepenny Opera, Look Back in
Anger, Oleanna, The Cherry Orchard and so on)
underlined the company’s courage, spirit and verve: there is plenty of
dramatic talent alive and thriving beside the Leam. The staging benefited from this hardworking
cast’s unflagging conviction. Everyone in the team contributed vividly
and dedicatedly to this production; the acting was consistent,
dependable
There was intermittent power of invention, a
dutiful persistence and a doggedness in every individual interpretation
which, if not quite pushing the door open to professional standards,
represented here and there something close to the best in amateur
theatre. It was forceful, gutsy, poignant, tragic, comic. Well, perhaps not comic enough. There is a
delicious, almost hilarious comic moment when a character (Bessie I
think), fulminating against looters, slyly turns up with three
multicoloured umbrellas. But there is a need in O’Casey – certainly this
one – to lighten the load. Melodrama is present much of the time, much
of it bleak. The play, and the players, need space; moments to breathe. In many respects that’s to a degree a drawback
not of the production but of the play. The build-up to the final tragic
outcome is at times painfully slow. 1926, when it was first seen, was
not 1916, but ten years on, a precariously established Eire. It has
little of the frenetic, bombed-out intensity of, say, Journey’s End,
another play which looks back so pungently in the latter 1920s at the
exigencies of an era of appalling tension and out and out warfare. So to the positives, and there were many. It is
Wendy Morris as the burly, larger than life Bessie Burgess who will pay
the ultimate price, and hers was a presence that dominated from her
first entry to her death, folding on to her large tummy like a slowly
deflating cushion. If anything, we got the comedy from her intolerant
and judgmental self, initially the local pariah, prying and pestering,
and latterly an unexpected heroine. Morris’s was a performance that
commanded the stage, and the house. And all very Oirish. One was impressively struck
in Vallins’ well-drilled, eager, forthright cast by the Irish accents,
not just hers, but all round: their aptness, their reliability and
consistency, their contrast, their well-craftedness. Often a stumbling
block elsewhere, that alone was a notably secure aspect that laid a
secure foundation for the whole evening at the Loft. Costumes were a strong point all through. The
lighting, though sometimes effectively low, seemed a fraction bland; but
the projections – powerfully evocative black and white photographs of
Dublin before and after the massive bombardment of, notably, the Post
Office and the Four Courts – were especially effective; more so, it
should be said, than the set, which
Moves were iffy. Characters were perhaps too
rarely placed in subtle, striking or symbolic blocks, so that this
aspect of the direction, plus some but by no means all the toings and
froings, looked outwardly well emough plotted but in enaction marginally
laissez-faire. By contrast, the silhouetting of a British officer
issuing threats and pontificating on principles was ominous, and almost
eerily well conceived. Pete Gillam – The History Boys’ made a
handsome, honest job of doomed Jack Clitheroe, torn between wife and
comrades, the old fight and fresh family hope, who – having withdrawn
from the citizen army, perhaps miffed by non-promotion - hearing of the
crucial meeting on Parnell Square and march is honourably lured back to
the Provisionals in time to catch the Easter Uprising. The Ibsenesque emotional weight of the play rests
more on his hapless wife, Nora (Lucy Hayton), gradually losing her wits
as well as her baby. This was a moving performance, her artful breaking
of her sentences powerful and emotive and appealing, her panic
believable, her whole performance full of poignancy and tenderness and
loveliness. One found something akin in Mollser, consumptive
child of the able, chirpy Mrs. Gogan (the Loft’s Artistic Administrator
Elspeth Dales). A tragically doomed figure, Mollser (Romy Alexander) is
one of several characters who (unless self made-up) confirmed with her
blackened, sunken eyes the skill and indeed expertise of the Loft’s
make-up backroom team: Alexander brought a tangible sadness, vacant look
and deep expressiveness to this achingly sad young part. Well worth a
lead role in future, I’d say. The pub girl-cum-floozy, Rosie Redmond (Emmeline
Braefield) had such good delivery, I’d have her on my ‘A’ list too.
Another minor character w The old geezers were appealing too: at times, a sort of Last of the Summer Wine on the edge of the Liffey. Chris Old as Uncle Peter, ‘that malignant old varmint’ but rather a gentle, shaggy directionless soul, Seamus Crowe more absorbing in the prominent role of Fluther Goode (particularly splendid when sozzled) – all the men have humble jobs: carpenter, bricklayer, fitter, labourer, vintner. It looks like curtains for young Irish Volunteer Lieutenant Langon (Pete Meredith) for all the sympathetic Captain Brennan (David Perryman) can do to save him Joel Cooper was an interesting, slightly
indefinable, seemingly call-up free presence flitting around as The
Covey, an attentive male cousin of the central couple. Tommy, the
bartender, was one of a pair of smaller roles performed characterfully
and cogently by Hugh Sorrill. There was a tendency rather over-dutifully to
face downstage (Peter almost obsessively; the acoustic does not demand
it), so that twice or three times five or six cast formed a tedious
horizontal line front- or midstage that looked painfully inept.
Reactions to characters and events were always well done; but instant -
rarely prepared or followed through: something amateur theatre has
consistently to work at to have a hope of comparing with their employed
opposite numbers. By the time we get to ‘Keep the Home Fires
Burning’, at the end – how it pales beside ‘Sinne Fianna Fail’, the
Irish national anthem redolent of their last stand at Dublin’s Post
Office - we are forcefully reminded that the British, no the Irish, are
the victors, at least till 1922, when Michael Collins is dead and De
Valera’s hotchpotch extreme coalition seizes the day. Sitting
precariously on a civilian as well as military powderkeg, this is a
vexed but serious play about torn loyalties and the psychological plus
family collapse that marches with them. The Loft is a marvellous family itself, a venue
that is rooted in a massive range of serious theatre, the likes of
Uncle Vanya, A Streetcar Names Desire, Mother Courage
Breaking the Code, Calendar Girls; assuredly a treat to come,
May will see them commemorate Dylan Thomas’s centenary with Under
Milk Wood. That the company should assay the best in Irish drama is
no surprise. But the enduring satisfaction is that, now under Tim
Willis’s Artistic Directorship, at the Loft serious and gripping drama
is patently alive and well and in good hands. Robert Harling’s bittersweet comedy-drama Steel Magnolias is at the Loft from Wednesday 2-Saturday 12 April. Under Milk Wood runs from Wednesday 7-Saturday 17 May. 0844 493 4938 www.loft-theatre.co.uk Roderic Dunnett |
|
|
|
and
often enough strong; their overall view of the piece worked; the
tensions – while the Republicans fight to the last, some family members
are even then fighting with the British Army in Flanders – were well
maintained.
gave
a feel of Irish poverty of the time by its very paucity, but was, as can
be a drawback in amateur stagings anywhere, flimsy in construction with
unconvincing (perhaps unnecessary) door and flatly unspecific, despite
several hopeful set changes. 
ho
caught the eye, making his Loft debut but bringing an intelligence and
proficiency to two military roles that marked him out, was Pete
Meredith. This looked like talent in the making, or indeed talent
already arrived.