Synopsis:
Iconic floral designer and cookery writer Constance Spry remains a household name to this day. A pioneer for working women, she ran a successful business as the florist of choice for the highest of high society, designing floral displays for royal weddings and for the Queen’s coronation as well as creating the iconic dish Coronation Chicken. But behind the image of this highly respected businesswoman lay a very different story of marital discord, affairs and heartache….
Cast:
Constance Spry – Penny Downie
Henry Spry – Christopher Ravenscroft
Val Pirie – Sally George
Rosemary Hume – Sheila Ruskin
Hannah Gluckstein – Carolyn Backhouse
Syrie Maugham – Carol Royle
Creative Team:
Writer – Anton Burge
Director – Alan Strachan
Design – Morgan Large
Lighting – James Whiteside
WARNING – THIS PLAY
CONTAINS SMOKING. THERE IS ALSO ADULTERY,
DECEIT, LESBIANISM AND SEX OUTSIDE MARRIAGE BUT YOU WILL BE CONFRONTED BY A
SIGN ON THE AUDITORIUM DOORS WARNING YOU THAT CIGARETTES ARE GOING TO BE SMOKED
ON STAGE. IF YOUR SENSIBILITIES CAN COPE
WITH ADULTERY, DECEIT, LESBIANISM AND SEX OUTSIDE MARRIAGE BUT YOU FALL INTO A SWOON AT THE MERE THOUGHT
OF TOBACCO BEING CONSUMED ON THE STAGE, DO NOT BUY TICKETS FOR THIS PLAY.
When making a flower
arrangement, it is important not to try and cram in too much material,
otherwise you may overwhelm the design.
The stems of this play are far too long and need a good trim down. Even the hardier blooms in the audience on
Friday began to wilt as the play ticked towards 2 ¾ hours. I began to need an aspirin dissolved in the
water. Some of the material in the
arrangement needs cutting back, and some elements are too showy and threaten to
unbalance the layout in their favour.
Conversely, some parts resemble foliage stuck in to bulk out the
design. Never, ever, over-vase your
flowers.
This is an old-fashioned
arrangement of a kind that will appeal to a certain audience. It will find favour among middle aged, middle
class ladies who belong to the WI and who consider themselves too old to go out
on the lash before screaming obscenities from the rear stalls at The
Bodyguard. There will be coach parties
coming up from the Home Counties, armed with OASIS, pin holders and crumpled
chicken wire.
Penny Downie “Constance
Spry” is a hardy perennial and is shown
off to good effect in this particular vase, working particularly well in this
arrangement. The creeping bindweed in
the plot is the role of Hannah Gluckstein, scrambling all over several long
scenes and in need of cutting back. It
is an unsympathetic, stereotypical part, badly written and, like Ruta
graveolens (rue), irritating after a
while and frankly somewhat embarrassing.
The appalling wig a la Glenda
Jackson on a particularly bad hair day doesn’t help. Conversely Carol Royle “Syrie Maugham”
appears in two scenes and blooms gaudily all over them, pulling focus from the
other parts and threatening to overbalance the arrangement. Always strive for harmony in your
arrangements, ladies. Each specimen must
support but not outshine the others. Fortunately, good support is offered by
Christopher Ravenscroft as a dry old stick propping up some of the
foliage.
An opportunity was lost
here to create drama. Spry’s arrangements
were always dramatic but, like a branch of Corkscrew Hazel, this representation
weaves about all over the place and doesn’t really come to any definable conclusion. Rather like the one floral arrangement at the
local flower show that fails to win any prizes, it is pleasant enough but there’s
no real drama. The end of the first act
is a bit of a fudge – everyone leaves the stage and the lights dim, and therefore
the audience thinks its time to clap, but then the lights go up again to reveal
a solitary painting hung in an art gallery.
The applause dies out – and then the lights go down again and everyone
has to start clapping again. We may
possibly have been mislead into clapping as Carole Royle’s mother was obviously
in the audience and applauded on her exit.
When this happened again after Ms. Royle’s one scene in the second half,
nobody was fooled and the auditorium rang out with the sound of one person
clapping. They soon stopped when they
realised nobody else followed suit.
There are an awful lot of
plastic flowers in this show.
Unfortunately Monkshood (aconitum napellus) is referred to as being in
the first bunch you see but there isn’t any in it. There is also a red Anemone “De Caen” in a
scene that takes place in January, which is wrong, because Anemone “De Caen”
blossoms in April. At one point a
painting is made of a floral arrangement.
The painting contains a single bloom of Anthurium but the floral arrangement
it depicts does not – there are white tulips, calla lilies, narcissus and
sprays of some kind of daisy-type “filler” flower but no Anthuriums. One of
the characters in the play is based on Syrie Maugham but this is spelt as “Maughan”
in the programme. The back of the
programme carries an advert for what I assume is a hideously expensive Covent
Garden florist. The photograph in this
advert is of appalling quality. The
photograph includes a large arrangement of deep red flowers (possibly roses,
but the picture is of too poor a quality to be sure). The picture is in black and white. Red flowers do not show up well in black and white images and you would have
thought that a) a professional photographer would have known this and b) the
firm it advertises would have commissioned a better picture both in terms of
quality and presentation of their products.
There is a facebook tag on the back of the flyer with the facebook “F”
followed by “artstheatrewestend”.
Unfortunately this makes it read as Fartstheatrewestend.
Personally, I think “Storm
in a Flower Vase” is a really, really naff title and smacks of desperation
because the author couldn’t think of a better alternative. The root phrase “storm in a teacup describes
something which is wildly overblown but really adds up to nothing very much, a
bit like this play. Inoffensive,
pleasant enough, slightly old fashioned and over-vased.
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