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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. |
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Letters to more than a friend
Sue Downing (left) and Louise Fulwell as Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West Vita & Virginia The Nonentities Rose Theatre, Kidderminster **** WHAT a lucky
woman is Eileen Atkins! The subjects of her two-hander play are those two
eminent ladies of letters, Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf –
whose exchange of correspondence between 1923 and 1941 have given her a
play on a plate. That's a bit unkind. It is a play that has been
moulded with skill and care after Ms Atkins was alert enough to spot the
possibilities – and she has juggled the chronology for her own purposes. Nevertheless, the letters were beautifully written, as indeed befits letters of the literati: – alert, percipient records of what became a deep love affair. This emerges in Pamela Meredith's production as an absorbing subject which blossoms in the confines of the theatre studio. It is fortunate in having two actresses whose
diction, though different, has impeccable clarity. Sue Downing (Virginia
Woolf) emerges as something of a joker who is the more earthy of the
two, while Louise Fulwell – who exchanges Vita's first-act pearls,
pleated skirt and vibrant jacket for the jodhpurs and horsiness that she
affects after the interval – is so cut-glass that it is a surprise not
to see her emitting refracted rays of light in all directions.
She is a drawling joy of terribly-Britishness –
though she must take care to see that desultory is pronounced
with its accent on the first syllable, not the second, as happened on
the first night. But she was completely successful in confronting
a terrible line about “concupiscence of short-sightedness and the greed
of man.” We were also treated to an off that is an unmistakable
orf, and there can be no complaints about that while we receive
our privileged glimpse into the Bloomsbury Set which flourished
from early in the last century to the beginning of the Second World War. While Louise Fulwell's Vita flits and flirts
around Persia and Moscow with her diplomat husband, Sue Downing's
Virginia is at home in England with jealousy as her jailer, a fine study
in anguish and frustration. This is an evening awash with words, from which
both actresses emerge with aplomb. To 12`-11-11. John Slim |
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