Tag Archives: Jill Freud

Crooked Wood – September 2009

6/10

By Gillian Plowman, based on the BBC TV film “Number 27” by Michael Palin

Directed by Anthony Falkingham

Company: Jill Freud Company

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Friday 11th September 2009

This was a good, fun evening. Again, a play which had originally been written around twenty years ago proved remarkably accurate for today. An old lady, Miss Barwick (Jill Freud), resists the pressures of unscrupulous property developers to sell the only house she’s ever lived in, and along the way we get some laughs and even some cheering (when the villain of the piece fell through the stairs). And a couple who were headed down the wrong path get a chance to change their lives, and that of their soon-to-be child, for the better.

The set was remarkable for such a small-scale production. A door with entrance hall on the left, stairs hidden behind the wall next to it, panelling and a door off to our right, and lots of furniture and ornaments representing the clutter of several generations, though in this case a lot of them were valuable antiques.

Jill Freud played the fluffy but shrewd old lady very well. It was a treat to see how she dodged all the awkward questions, and used every tool in the book to get the men visiting her to fix up the house, now falling into a serious state of neglect. Richard Gibson played Andrew Veitch, the ruthless developer who finds it impossible to use his nastiest tactics on the dear old lady, especially when she tells him her father left a lot of money to Barnardo’s when he died, Veitch being an orphan brought up by that institution. (Personally, I’d ask to see a copy of the will, but he drank it in like mother’s milk.)

His wife, Sally (Penelope Rawlins) works for Sotheby’s, and is busy revamping their expensive house, spending all her husband’s hard earned money before it’s actually been earned. She’s particularly touched by Miss Barwick’s generosity, giving her a lot of old books which she knows how to restore and care for. There’s also a public spirited chap called Quentin Gilbey, who used to work with Andrew when they were both young and idealistic. Now he’s qualified as a lawyer, and spends his time helping other ordinary people block the rapacious schemes of property developers. He’s happy to help Miss Barwick when the developers’ man on the council slaps a notice on the house for being unsafe.

Finally, the piece wouldn’t be the same without a nasty piece of work, and in this case it’s a chap called Murray Lester (Simon Snashall). He’s Andrew’s boss, and spends at least half of his time with his mobile clamped to his ear and the other half telling Andrew to get a move on. Swearing is not so much optional as mandatory, and it’s his accident with the stairs, after a pretty vicious attack on the old girl, that gets the cheer. One of the best lines closed the first half, when Miss Barwick answered Andrew’s phone for him, and reports Lester’s message verbatim: “Don’t take all fucking day.”

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Lady Vanishes – September 2008

6/10

Adapted by Andrew Taylor from the screenplay of the Hitchcock film by Launder and Gilliat, which was based on the novel “The Wheel Spins” by Ethel Lina White

Directed by Mark Sterling

Company: Jill Freud and Company

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Tuesday 9th September 2008

The set for this was absolutely amazing. The first scenes take place in the small hotel, and we see, from the left, a door, two tiny bedrooms with the beds being more like chairs, both on a diagonal, then a wall with a shuttered window, and on the right the hotel reception desk with a telephone. The backdrop is jagged mountains. For the train, the cast move the bedrooms and window section round, and in a few moments we have the interior of a train. Another section was brought on to the left, and the whole contraption was fastened together, so that the train could be moved right or left as needed to keep the action as central as possible. For the final scene, the train parts were turned around so that we could see Iris and Gilbert arriving at Victoria, but I’ll get on to that bit later.

With a small touring company, the parts had to be rationed, so Iris, the Margaret Lockwood part from the film, only had one friend with her in the eastern alps. The lawyer who’s hoping to become a judge, and his mistress were also absent, but Charters and Caldicott were definitely present (do I hear cheering?). They brought all the usual humour with them, from the opening scene when the hotel manager gets round to speaking in English last, so the only room left for them is the maid’s, through the telephone call from London, to the absolutely ridiculous request Miss Froy makes for the sugar. I have to confess that these two characters are a bit like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern for me – I can never remember which is which – but one of them takes the gun at the end, while the other helps drive the train back to safety. The nuns on the train were a bit confusing at first, but I got the hang of them eventually, and the story rattled along at a good pace.

The effects were naturally limited too, but effective. The lights went out when the train went through tunnels, there was steam wafting around the place from time to time, and the scene in the luggage car, with the magician escaping from his false-bottomed trunk, was pretty spectacular. I was quite relieved that they didn’t try to jiggle about to demonstrate that the train was actually moving; I’d probably have been sick after a short time of that, and I’m quite happy to engage my imagination for something like this.

Some minor plot changes were necessary. Iris gets her bash on the head when the porter carrying luggage to the train comes through the hotel door just as she’s picking up a bag on the other side. And the turning point for Gilbert came when the steward carried a bucket of rubbish through the train with the herbal tea packet prominently displayed on top. Other than this, the story seemed much as I remembered it from the film, though we didn’t get to see the folk dancing.

Penelope Rawlins as Iris was good as a discontented rich girl heading back to London for a marriage she felt was necessary but not desirable. Jill Freud played Miss Froy, and despite having quite shrewd eyes, managed to convince her fellow travellers that she was a dotty old lady who rambled on about nothing very much. Paul Leonard as Gilbert was older than I expected, and although he had the right sort of amiable and quirky  personality, I didn’t quite buy the attraction between him and Iris, not in terms of ditching the marriage plans, anyway. Clive Flint and Jonathan Jones did Charters and Caldicott to perfection – makes you proud to be British – and the rest of the cast, which included three acting ASMs, provided us with a large range of other characters very effectively.

The final scene in this version has Gilbert and Iris arriving back at Victoria, and Iris deciding she doesn’t want to marry the other chap. Gilbert is so happy he forgets the tune that Miss Froy asked him to memorise. Just then, a whole group of nuns turn up, Miss Froy among them, humming the very tune. They recognise her, and it’s happy reunion time. End of play. I had a good sob, of course, which made the evening all the more enjoyable. I don’t know how people would find this if they hadn’t seen the movie, but as it’s one of my all time favourites, I really lapped this up. Although not as jokey as the stage version of The 39 Steps, this has always been one of Hitchcock’s funniest movies, and I think that helped it translate to the stage so well.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me