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WELL By Lisa Kron Trafalgar Studios 14 Whitehall, London SW1A 2DY Directed by Eve Leigh Designed by Helen Goddard Lighting Design by Tim Mascall Call +44 (0) 870 060 6632 Tickets £15 - £22.50 Tues – Sat 7.45pm; Sat Matinees 3pm Running time 1 hours 20 mins with no intermission Through September 2007
Well, there it is. Maybe.
Staging a play about staging a play within a play about oneself makes playwright, Lisa Kron’s conceit at times intriguing, and at other times self conscious and deceiving. Feeling liberated at having achieved wellness, but also resentful of the years of mother-induced ailment, Miss Kron’s story of her family’s pre-occupation with illness provoked this auto- biographical picking at family scabs. Her repeated assertion that her construct was ‘a multi character exploration of issues of health and illness in the individual and in a community’ lost its impact after a few repetitions. With the family’s constant laying of all physical woes at the door of allergy, the resultant scenes within an allergy clinic gave Thomas Morrison, Jason Rowe, Hannah Stokely and Zara Tempest-Walters, all communally described in the programme as ‘Ensemble’, special moments of comic characterisation, which they played with relish and charm. This was not so with Natalie Casey as the writer/protagonist. Addressing the audience directly while rooted to the spot, in an examination of full-on filial angst, her result was a stilted, rapid fire, artificially accented delivery devoid of personality, but not lacking in self pity. As the playwright’s mother, Ann Kron, however, Sarah Miles rose to the task triumphantly in a brilliant, constantly fascinating and hugely enjoyable study of an eccentric matriarch apparently flirting with dementia. Blending into her ‘La-Z-Boy’ chair so that it was alternately a throne, a sick bed and camouflage, Miss Miles’ return to the stage is a rewarding affirmation of her skill and art. The playwright’s deception of the audience I referred to in the first paragraph was the revelation that Miss Miles wasn’t really playing mother Kron after all, but playing an actor playing an actor playing her! And the scene in which the ‘Ensemble’ all had an attack of conscience, stepped out of character and left ‘The Production’ with a treacly, sentimental farewell to mother Kron was more than could be believed. All too clever by one third, Miss Kron, when the device is abused. On Broadway, where the play was so well received, the playwright played herself. This might have rescued the piece. But one was left with a feeling of having been manipulated, and not particularly involved or moved, albeit having been amused by much of the writer’s imagination and the company’s skill.
Recommended London Correspondent Talk Theatre in Chicago Podcast Date Reviewed September 10, 2008 |
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