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Written
by
John Osborne
and
Anthony Creighton
Directed
by
Peter Gill
Designer
John Gunter
Lighting
Designer
Hugh Vanstone
Music
David Shrubsole
George
Dillon
Joseph Fiennes
Mrs.
Elliot
Anne Reid
Mr.
Elliot
Geoffrey
Hutching
Ruth
Francesca
Annis
Josie
Zoe Tapper
Norah
Dorothy Atkinson
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Comedy
Theatre
From 20th September 2005 |
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Epitaph for George Dillon
begins
and ends with a cuddle. In
a 1950s living room cluttered
with china and chintz, teenager
Josie wraps her arms around
an imagined lover, lies back
on the couch, and wonders
aloud what 'it' would be like.
And at the play's close, 'Come
on, Mum, let's dance!', George's
final line and perhaps only
kind gesture, to Anne Reid's
Mrs. Elliot.
Written just before
Look
Back in Anger
made John Osborne famous,
Epigraph
for George Dillon
is coruscating about actor-writer
George's inclination to be
a useless bore, 'that ridiculous
being called an artist'. A
collaboration with Anthony
Creighton, this earlier play
is in many ways warmer - its
hopeless would-be hero more
angsty than angry. As played
by Joseph Fiennes, George
emerges as a more forgiving
and forgivable character than
expected.
In Peter Gill's hands the
play's potentially odd texture
coheres into a convincing
tragi-comedy: fantastically
funny, bleak and deeply affecting.
A cruel moment of queasy comedy
at the end of Act 1 sets the
tone. The joke, delivered
with goading panache by Fiennes,
invites us - and it seems
himself - to accept, that
yes, he really is as awful
as we suspect.
Too big for his Osborne-style
duffel coat, from the moment
he walks through the small
suburban front door - all
pretended public school pontificating
and hollow gratitude - the
'lovely young man' George
Dillon is evidently anything
but a grateful pup down on
his luck. Anne Reid as Mrs.
Elliot, Dorothy Atkinson as
spinster in waiting Norah,
Zoe Tapper as Josie and Geoffrey
Hutchings's Mr. Elliot are
all in a way his victims and
they give performances that
rest carefully on the brink
of parody.
Technically an out of work
actor, with a mixture of vile
verve and clownish hunger
for affection, Fiennes's George
in fact rarely stops performing.
The scenes with Francesca
Annis's hardened, once romantic
Ruth are the only ones in
which we are allowed to see
the rather unspectacular young
man behind the bravado. Ruth,
her vowels as flattened as
her spirit, is as trapped
as her young niece Josie.
She's a potentially dour character
whom Annis instead imbues
with allure and a powerfully
pervasive sadness; how 'young'
you look 'sometimes' is George's
foot-in-it attempt at flattery,
barely registering how powerfully
he is drawn.
The final embrace, when it
comes, between indulgent mother,
Mrs. Elliot, and the freeloading,
lazily seductive surrogate
son who has taken advantage
in every possible way, is
pathetic in every sense of
the word.
The Elliots are nothing special.
From Ruth, for whom it is
far too late to take chances
on starving artist lovers,
comes the constant melancholic
reminder that even if they
are better educated and cleverer
than the rest of the household,
neither she nor George are
special either. The great
emotional snag of this otherwise
extraordinary production is
that it leaves us wishing
she were wrong.
Olivia
Cole |
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