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Written
by
Neil
LaBute
Director
David Grindley
Design
Jonathan
Fensom
Lighting
Jason Taylor
Sound
Gregory Clarke
Cast
David Scwimmer
Saffron Burrows
Lesley Manville
Sara Powell
Catherine Tate
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Gielgud
Theatre
12 May - 13 August 2005 |
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Doubtless
every reviewer has felt obliged
to say it, so it might as
well be put out of the way
at once: yes, the Man here
played by David Schwimmer
is more the Ross of TV's
Friends
than
not - but the point is, the
Man part is a Ross-ish part,
and just as Schwimmer played
Ross with absolute naturalness,
so he does the Man. Some screen
actors do not translate to
the live space: Schwimmer
does. He is a convincing performer,
and carries the load here
well - he is on stage throughout,
and the gradual chastening
of his character is subtly
done.
He is excellently supported
by Catherine Tate, Sarah Powell,
Lesley Manville and Saffron
Burrows. The women they play
each powerfully brings a dose
of reality into the quixotic
and confused quest of the
Man for emotional self-understanding
(or the male version of what
passes for such), because
he is about to marry, and
has a sense that he has missed
something valuable in his
passage to date through a
sequence of relationships.
He is a male jilt, and the
path he has trodden is paved
with pain - others' pain mainly,
caused by his insensibility
and self-regardingness, but
also his own. The journey
into his past - he revisits
his most significant earlier
girlfriends to see if he can
locate the source of his disquiet
- turns up trumps: he discovers
who it was he really loved
and loves: but too late.
The idea is a neat one, in
both transatlantic senses,
and LaBute offers a revealing
succession of perspectives
on the perennial problem of
the non-committing man and
the harm he does, including
(in the end) to himself. Males
in the audience can recognise
bits of themselves there,
and more than bits, and what
the women of the play have
to say about it all stings
like jellyfish. This means
that the writing comes across
brightly, the characters are
realised, the scenario focused,
and the lesson it all delivers
both clear and educative.
Tate, Powell, Manville and
Burrows each give the audience
an enormous quantum of pleasure.
How good this country's acting
profession is, and how deep
its resource of talent, is
on parade in this play. Catherine
Tate's Sam is the high-school
girlfriend, still hurt because
the Man took another girl
to the Prom, and now in what
the Man non-too-subtly implies
is the second-best of motherhood
and housewifery. Sarah Powell's
pot-smoking, sex-and-fun-loving
Tyler is full of energy and
a kind of forgiveness; but
underneath it there is hurt
from the time that the Man
kept ringing a number in California
and then putting the phone
down, over and over.
Lesley Manville's crisp and
scary Lindsay has a last laugh
on the Man, beating him down
into a humiliating recapitulation
- but with the boot on the
other foot - of his own betrayals
and flights. Saffron Burrows
as the elegant, beautiful,
emotionally majestic Bobbi,
is exactly right as the girl
whom the Man at last, and
too late, realises he loves.
Angry at being recalled to
a confrontation with that
past, and disdainful now of
the belated claim that the
Man tries to make on her as
licensed by his now-understood
feelings, she nevertheless
is obviously the woman he
would have loved best, however
much of a fool he was not
to see it. Thus Saffron Burrows
plays her, and she makes one
feel sorry for the Man at
last when she stalks out of
his hotel room door.
Theatre works when it grips
and pleases, reveals and provokes.
This play and this cast succeed
admirably in all four respects.
The test of quality in the
West End is not just whether
one would urge others to get
tickets, but whether one would
go again oneself. I will and
shall, not least for the sheer
quality of the performances.
AC Grayling |
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