Synopsis:
The offices of Messrs. Walker, Windermere and Co., Solicitors, London Wall, 1931. New secretary Miss Milligan is unsure about her relationship with Hector Hammond, who works in the shipping offices downstairs. Miss Janus's 10 year courtship with a member of the Dutch Legation doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Miss Bufton is managing to keep several suitors "on the go" at the same time. Miss Hooper is waiting for her (married) boyfriend to get a divorce - but will she be able to get him to pop the question once it is through? Mr. Brewer, the office Lothario, is eyeing up Miss Milligan. Miss Willesden, one of the firm's most troublesome clients, wants to change her Will (again). Mr. Walker merely wonders whether any of his staff will manage to do some work today instead of trying to sort their personal lives out.For Miss Milligan, there is a surprise in store from an unexpected direction, while Miss Janus has little inkling that a surprise is coming her way too - but it won't be nearly so welcome....
Cast:
Birkenshaw: Craig Vye
Mr. Brewer: Alex Robertson
Miss Hooper: Eleanor Yates
Miss Janus: Alix Dunmore
Miss Milligan: Maia Alexander
Miss Willesden: Marty Cruickshank
Hector Hammond: Timothy O'Hara
Miss Bufton: Mia Austen
Mr. Walker: David Whitworth
Creative Team:
Play by: John Van Druten
Director: Tricia Thorns
Set: Alex Marker
Costumes: Emily Stuart
Lighting: Duncan Coombe
I had no idea that it was so bloody exhausting hobbling round on crutches. With a foot the size of a melon and an almost completely unbendable ankle, both jobbies had to be pressed into service to get me from Victoria Station to the St. James' Theatre, where this show has just transferred from the weird and wonderful Finborough Theatre in downtown Earl's Court. I arrived exhausted and grouchy, and was in no mood to tackle the almost vertical stairs down into the auditorium, particularly when I noticed a most peculiar thing about the lighting in this place. There are vertical yellow lights recessed into the wall, and they have the extremely disconcerting effect of leaving red "light smears"on your retina should you catch them out of the corner of your eye at any point. This made my progress down the stairs somewhat more like a trip to a fairground Fun House than I would have liked; for anyone not that steady on their feet, this place is really dangerous. Heaven knows what suffers of epilepsy make of the place. But of course, no doubt the fashionable architects who designed the place never considered that. It makes a strange counterpoint to the stripped back, minimalist, uber-fashionable St. James' Bar that you enter through, feeling like a poor relation and suddenly realising how shabby yours shoes look as The Trendy St. James' expense account clientele sip the latest designer cocktail up at the carrera marble bar.
Anyway, I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to get. It turned out that I got a play which is sometimes so dated that it creaks audibly, and a play which is sometimes so relevant that it sparkles. I got a play that has elements of high and low comedy, farce, drama. pathos and tension - so much so that I still can't work out in my head whether it could be classified as a straight play with comedy, a comedy with tragic interludes, a tragedy with elements of farce or a farce masquerading as a straight play. At times you don't notice that you are watching a chimera, an uneasy blending of several different dramatic styles and formats because you get caught up in the comedy (or the tragedy, or whatever other theatrical style is currently to the fore). At other times the gear changes are very (and awkwardly) noticeable - its almost like you are watching an experimental play written by J. B. Priestly in one of his "messging about with time" modes, during the writing of which he thought "I'm going to put together a story and tell it from the point of the comedy in it, and then we're going to go back to the beginning and tell it again from the viewpoint of a different character and highlight the tragedy, then back to the beginning again and make it a straight play, and then again and make it a farce, and then at the end for one last time with all the elements blended together". The plot is clunky and the end (or part of it) is given away completely just before the interval in an exchange of dialogue so pointed that you almost expect a hooter to go off and the words "plot device" picked out in neon to flash on and off above the stage. Its so obvious what is going to happen that it really is quite laughable.
There are three superb performances, most notably by Alix Dunmore as the fading Miss Janus, wrestling with the thought that she is marrying a man she doesn't really love simply to escape the awful prospect of spending the rest of her life as the office spinster on £3 a week and caring for her elderly father. She is ably assisted by Mia Austen as the blousy Miss Bufton (peroxide hair, dodgy vowel sound, a different man every night and the 6.10 from Liverpool Street) and Alex Robertson as the repulsive Mr. Brewer. The side is very badly let down by Maia Alexander who cannot project her dialogue, despite having trained at RADA and who seems to drift aimlessly around the stage jellyfish-like and seemingly without any backbone whatsoever. Her performance is so bland, so underplayed and so listless that it was only with the greatest difficultly that I managed to restrain myself from hobbling onto the stage and hitting her with my crutch.
Some of the costumes are so accurate that they make the characters wearing them look as if they had just stepped out of a period photograph, while others look as if they had been pulled from the rag bags put out for the charity shop dustbins. Likewise some of the hairstyles are spot on for the period, while others are at least a decade out - long, curly tresses were not fashionable duing the 1930s. The set is clever and the scene changes are slickly handled by the entire cast, elegantly and efficiently choreographed and carried out completely in character. Elements of the direction bothered me slightly, most noticeably during the more farcical moments when seemingly everyone is sent the long way round the front of a desk rather than taking the more direct and logical route across the back of the stage. There are some issues with badly placed chairs in the scenes in Mr Walker's office and both exits from the stage seem rather cramped, meaning that characters often appear to be sidling off through a door rather than exiting through it naturally.
All in all a good evening, which would have been better if the play had been rather more sure of what it was trying to be. It would have worked as a straight play, a tragi-comedy or a farce but not a blend of all three. It's a period piece which hasn't been seen since its first run and I very much doubt whether it will ever surface again after this outing.
Anyway, I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to get. It turned out that I got a play which is sometimes so dated that it creaks audibly, and a play which is sometimes so relevant that it sparkles. I got a play that has elements of high and low comedy, farce, drama. pathos and tension - so much so that I still can't work out in my head whether it could be classified as a straight play with comedy, a comedy with tragic interludes, a tragedy with elements of farce or a farce masquerading as a straight play. At times you don't notice that you are watching a chimera, an uneasy blending of several different dramatic styles and formats because you get caught up in the comedy (or the tragedy, or whatever other theatrical style is currently to the fore). At other times the gear changes are very (and awkwardly) noticeable - its almost like you are watching an experimental play written by J. B. Priestly in one of his "messging about with time" modes, during the writing of which he thought "I'm going to put together a story and tell it from the point of the comedy in it, and then we're going to go back to the beginning and tell it again from the viewpoint of a different character and highlight the tragedy, then back to the beginning again and make it a straight play, and then again and make it a farce, and then at the end for one last time with all the elements blended together". The plot is clunky and the end (or part of it) is given away completely just before the interval in an exchange of dialogue so pointed that you almost expect a hooter to go off and the words "plot device" picked out in neon to flash on and off above the stage. Its so obvious what is going to happen that it really is quite laughable.
There are three superb performances, most notably by Alix Dunmore as the fading Miss Janus, wrestling with the thought that she is marrying a man she doesn't really love simply to escape the awful prospect of spending the rest of her life as the office spinster on £3 a week and caring for her elderly father. She is ably assisted by Mia Austen as the blousy Miss Bufton (peroxide hair, dodgy vowel sound, a different man every night and the 6.10 from Liverpool Street) and Alex Robertson as the repulsive Mr. Brewer. The side is very badly let down by Maia Alexander who cannot project her dialogue, despite having trained at RADA and who seems to drift aimlessly around the stage jellyfish-like and seemingly without any backbone whatsoever. Her performance is so bland, so underplayed and so listless that it was only with the greatest difficultly that I managed to restrain myself from hobbling onto the stage and hitting her with my crutch.
Some of the costumes are so accurate that they make the characters wearing them look as if they had just stepped out of a period photograph, while others look as if they had been pulled from the rag bags put out for the charity shop dustbins. Likewise some of the hairstyles are spot on for the period, while others are at least a decade out - long, curly tresses were not fashionable duing the 1930s. The set is clever and the scene changes are slickly handled by the entire cast, elegantly and efficiently choreographed and carried out completely in character. Elements of the direction bothered me slightly, most noticeably during the more farcical moments when seemingly everyone is sent the long way round the front of a desk rather than taking the more direct and logical route across the back of the stage. There are some issues with badly placed chairs in the scenes in Mr Walker's office and both exits from the stage seem rather cramped, meaning that characters often appear to be sidling off through a door rather than exiting through it naturally.
All in all a good evening, which would have been better if the play had been rather more sure of what it was trying to be. It would have worked as a straight play, a tragi-comedy or a farce but not a blend of all three. It's a period piece which hasn't been seen since its first run and I very much doubt whether it will ever surface again after this outing.
