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Love Child
by Joanna Murray-Smith
Directed by Nicolette Kay
Presented by Muzikansky
Finborough Theatre
118 Finborough Rd London SW10 9ED
Call +44 (0) 20 0870 4000 838 Tickets £8 - £12
Tues – Sat 7.30pm; Sun Mats 3.30pm
Running time 65 mins with no intermission
Through 17 Mar 2007
No Love Lost
With a soap-style sting in the tale, the meeting/confrontation between birth mother, and child given up at birth, now in her twenties, is examined in intimate detail by playwright Joanna Murray-Smith, described in the programme as ‘one of Australia’s pre-eminent playwrights and novelists’. Although her subject is a fertile field, it is regularly ploughed in American TV films, leaving one with the nagging feeling that a lot of the cut and thrust with consequent opening of hearts and wounds has been heard and seen before.
The clinical design by Alex Marker made the players and thus their characters look as awkward as the situation demanded. The direction of Nicolette Kay seemed at times missing, and at other times imposed to the point of intrusion. The characters would either stand and talk, or sit and talk, occasionally swapping uncomfortable looking seats, or find themselves hugging in a theatrical freeze, or addressing the balcony in monologue.
The experienced Kristin Milward as mother Anna, despite appearing to develop an itchy scalp when standing, seemed to incorporate these strictures into her performance more successfully than did Charlotte Lucas, as daughter, Billie. Miss Milward’s Anna, bereft of love, and sublimating this in her work as a wildlife documentary maker, and her minimalist lifestyle, kept one watching her, as much when she was listening, as when she spoke, sign of a compelling actress. Her moments of emotional confession were genuine, insightful and moving. Miss Lucas, in her portrayal of Billie, a TV soap-opera sex object, for which she is famous and of which she is proud, perhaps was led to delve as little in her performance as her alter ego would need to. With a single facial expression, she galloped through torrents of words with varying degrees of animation, leaving the impression that the playwright, the director and she were all talking at the same time, and were all responsible for this.
The players were not helped by sprinklings of heightened prose: ‘do you dream my dreams?’ etc, trowelled into some otherwise absorbing writing. The theatrical sharing of lines by the characters towards the end was a jarring confusion of styles, and no substitute for a satisfying resolution to an original and provocative, if barely credible, deception.
Miss Kay’s eschewing of an occasional silence might account partly for the short running time, but even this would not explain the 25 minutes missing from the advertised 90. The play had run its course, though, and nothing seemed left out except, perhaps, the audience.
The Finborough has a fine reputation on London’s fringe. The building is receiving a makeover, and after July, when the anti-smoking laws make the air breathable again, non-smokers might also enjoy the now quite attractive pub downstairs.
Somewhat Recommended
Saul Reichlin
London correspondent
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