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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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Two superb sides of the story
Never seeing eye-to-eye. Vilma Watson and Stan Barten
are a problem for each other in A Different Way Home. A Different Way Home The Nonentities The Rose Theatre, Kidderminster ***** JIMMIE CHINN has given us a play
that is in fact two monologues, by brother and sister Leslie and Maureen.
In Pamela Meredith's studio production, the only time they appear
together is for the curtain call. Not that there are any curtains: this
is just another quirky factor in an absorbing evening of first-class
theatre. Leslie and Maureen are two very separate people,
people who don't get on with each other, who don't talk to each other;
who in this respect are, alas, like many people in the great big world
outside. We meet Leslie first. Stanley Barten, resonant of
voice and amiable of manner, arrives with a bit of a shiver and
pronounces that it's time to get the kettle on – in the adopted
Lancashire tones that are always a good bet for making us realise what a
friendly chap is talking to us. He's a man of habit. Always does ribs and cabbage
on a Monday. Always plans to do some decorating but never gets round to
it. A likeable, human sort of citizen. Or is he? After the interval, it's Vilma Watson's
turn to put Maureen's point of view. Again, we meet a pretty ordinary
person, but this time one who is dying for a cigarette, who lives for
her knitting and despairs that nobody will wear a pullover these days;
who explains that her Mum never trusted the Pope because he was a
foreigner. SMALL MINDED Moreover, we learn from her that brother Leslie
won't go near a pizza because it's foreign. He doesn't like foreign
things and he didn't go to her wedding because her husband was not
British. She reckons that if you call him small-minded you are
just about summing him up. On the other hand, in unthinking mitigation,
she does explain that they were brought up to be suspicious of
everything. Nevertheless, can the Leslie of whom she speaks
so disparagingly be the Leslie who has had us eating out of his hand
before the interval? The man who shed those very real tears in the
moving moments when he was contemplating the death of his mother?
Are we to side with him or his sister – the sister who tells us,
unprompted, that she doesn't get on with any of the neighbours? We think
we may know why: she has a pretty sharp tongue, does our Maureen. So it's pay-your-money-and-take-your-choice time,
our dilemma proffered in two superb performances. He sits throughout in
an ancient easy chair; she adds the flourish of mobility by bestriding
the stage in a sort of gossip-a-go-go. They both come believably to the task of taking
us into their confidence, as if we are the only folk in the world to be
privy to their views and their secrets. I am sure I was not alone in
feeling privileged to have been allowed a brief insight – it is all over
in less than an hour-and-a-half – into their lives. This is a production that could grace the
professional stage, no questions asked. To 22.1.11. John Slim |
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