Tag Archives: Yvonne Arnaud

Pack Of Lies – February 2009

6/10

By Hugh Whitemore

Directed by Christopher Morahan

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Monday 16th February 2009

We saw this back in 1983 (Theatre Royal, Brighton) when Judi Dench and Michael Williams played the married couple at the heart of this story. I don’t recall much of the performances (I’m sure they were excellent) but in any case I’m sure I’d still have enjoyed this production just as much.

Jenny Seagrove and Simon Shepherd play Barbara and Bob Jackson, neighbours to Peter and Helen Kroger, good friends and Russian spies, both at the same time. The play takes us from the good times, through the initial request for help from the British Secret Service and the gradual realisation of the true nature of their ‘good friends’, to the tragic ending with the death of Barbara. The strain of having to keep their secret, not just from their friends but also from their daughter, Julie, proved too much for a woman of nervous disposition.

The set was much as I remember. It’s the interior of the ground floor of a semi-detached house in a London suburb, Ruislip in this case, showing us the sitting room, entrance hall and stairs, and kitchen. All very 1950s. The costumes all matched the time period perfectly, with Barbara and Bob being conservative, even dowdy, and Helen being flamboyant and glamorous. The paintings on the sitting room wall which are meant to be by Barbara are of decent quality for an amateur (I’ve seen a lot worse in The Deep Blue Sea), and seeing the old Bakelite telephone reminded me of the days when a phone call was an event, and people formed communities with those they lived close to, rather than logging on to the global village. How things change.

It’s an interesting play which never drags, for all the relative lack of action and amount of information to get across. Due to Roy Marsden’s indisposition, the part of  the Secret Service chap, Stewart, was played by David Morley Hale, who made good use of his character’s notebook to remind himself of the lines. His delivery was a bit flat as result – he’ll be better once he’s off the book – but it’s a fairly dry part anyway, so I don’t think we lost too much from the cast change, and I suspect most of the audience were just grateful he was there.

I liked the way the casual snobbery of the time was thrown in now and again. Describing one neighbouring couple as British, and then qualifying it by commenting that the wife came from Wales, was typically spot-on. The solo speeches to the audience were also good, as they filled in a lot of the information that the structure just wouldn’t accommodate otherwise. In all, a very good evening out.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Tons Of Money – February 2009

6/10

Adapted by Alan Ayckbourn from a comedy by Will Evans and Valentine

Directed by Joe Harmston

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Thursday 12th February 2009

Set: standard 20s/30s style living room of the well-to-do. Double doors on the left, fireplace to the right, French windows centre back, with a bit of garden terrace. Sofa centre left, and other chairs and tables round the place or brought on as required.

The set may have been well-to-do, but the couple living in the house certainly weren’t. Aubrey and Louise lived on credit, and had run up so many debts that the husband was due to be declared bankrupt in a week. Into this situation comes a solicitor with news of Aubrey’s brother’s death, and the information that said brother had left him a life interest in his estate, while the capital reverts to a cousin, George Maitland, on Aubrey’s death. It doesn’t take long for the impecunious couple to realise that the life interest, although amounting to several thousands of pounds a year, would soon be gobbled up by the many creditors they’d accrued. Cue a remark or two about the criminality of lending people money and encouraging them to get into debt – I would have thought more people would have laughed. Anyway, the wife is soon hatching a plot for Aubrey to die, then reappear as cousin George, who is believed to have died many years ago in Mexico, though proof has never been forthcoming. All you need to know now is that the butler, Sprules, has overheard part of this plot and snaffles a copy of the will, and that an old school chum of Louise’s, Jean, is due for a visit, at which point she confides that she was also married, briefly, to a man who died out in South America somewhere, and the next two acts pretty much write themselves.

First off, Aubrey reappears disguised as cousin George. Sprules believes this to be his brother Henery, whom he has inveigled to play the part of the missing cousin so they can get the money, and a lot of the humour in these later acts was down to Sprules and his intended, the maid, attempting to communicate with “Henery” using the agreed signals – stroking the elbow, tugging the ear, tapping the nose, and, if all else fails, dropping something, like a tray. There was a lovely scene where Sprules, hidden behind one of the double doors, throws a series of larger and larger trays through the other door in a desperate attempt to alert his brother to danger. Later, when he believes Henery is dead, he’s so caught up in his grief that he completely ignores the real Henery’s signals. It was great fun, and Sprules was beautifully played by Christopher Timothy.

However, neither Henery nor anyone else is dead yet. Once Louise discovers that Jean is married to cousin George, and that Aubrey seems all too ready to get cracking on the honeymoon, she has to think of some other solution to the problem. The solicitor (I assume he’s charging for all these trips from London) informs her that she’s the residuary legatee in the original will – gets all the dosh if George dies first – so she tells Aubrey to go off to the river and drown, as George, then come back later as someone completely different, and then he can marry her, the rich widow.

You wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to get a stretch of river all to yourself for a quick spot of drowning, but they manage it in the end. Naturally, Sprules is devastated at losing his brother, and the plot is further thickened when another George Maitland turns up, this time Henery in disguise. He’s also very pleased to find he’s got an attractive wife along with the money, and doesn’t hesitate to take advantage of the situation. While he’s chasing Jean round the garden, another George Maitland arrives, this time the real one. With Aubrey reappearing, disguised as a monk, Brother Brown, the final act tests Louise’s wits to the limit. She finally decides that Aubrey will have to come back to life (he was so dazed by the explosion that supposedly carried him off the first time, that he’s been wandering round the area for weeks not knowing who or where he was), only for the much-travelled solicitor to inform them all that the estate, now realised, comes to the grand sum of one pound, a few shillings and some pence.  Still, at least Aubrey and Louise, and George and Jean have all been happily reunited, as have Sprules and Henery.

We’d seen this before at the National, over twenty years ago, and neither of us could remember it at all. This version left me with two impressions – that the humour was mainly in the performance, and that even with Alan  Ayckbourn’s updates for the National production, the piece was still pretty dated. The cast did good work, and we did enjoy ourselves, but either this production didn’t do the piece justice, or it had reached the historical curiosity stage. It’s surprising, given the current financial situation, that the play didn’t come across better, but that’s theatre for you.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Holly And The Ivy – November 2008

5/10

By Wynyard Browne

Directed by Michael Lunney

Company: Middle Ground

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Friday 21st November 2011

This was a revival of an earlier Middle Ground touring production which we’d seen at the Connaught several years ago. We’d enjoyed the previous performance well enough, and tonight was a similar story.

The set was as before. A large sitting room with a sofa and chairs, a window at the back showing us the local church, doors off back right (vicar’s study), back left (kitchen and dining room), and an entrance lobby front left, with access to the stairs. The time is 1947, Christmas Eve, so there’s a Christmas tree and some decorations.

When the play starts, Jenny is finishing the decorating, but is interrupted by her friend, David, and her father the vicar, who needs to get to a school for some pre-Christmas event. From these conversations we learn that a group of people are expected for Christmas, including a couple of aunts. David wants Jenny to come away with him when he leaves for South America at the end of January, but she feels she can’t leave her father. There’s another sister, Margaret, who could come home and look after him, but it seems to be generally accepted in the family that that’s not going to happen. Jenny’s brother Michael arrives unexpectedly – he’s doing his National Service and managed to wangle some leave by making out it could be his last Christmas with his father – and he helps David to decorate the room while Jenny gets on with the dinner.     Then the aunts arrive, and they’re well worth the price of admission. Aunt Bridget is Irish, the vicar’s sister, I assume, as he’s also Irish, and she’s as outspoken as you could wish for. Aunt Lydia was presumably married to Bridget’s other brother, long since dead, but she’s still part of the family. Both women have all the instincts of the most intuitive vulture, and they soon figure out that David has sort of proposed to Jenny. So their next task is to arrange for a happy ending by getting Margaret to take over the job of caring for her father so that Jenny can get away with her young man. Aside from all this, aunt Lydia has a nice line in offering to help, but sinking happily back into the sofa when the offer is turned down, while Bridget insists on sitting in her preferred spot on the sofa, and she only has to stand and look, for others to realise their mistake and move. They were very good fun.

A chap called Richard turned up – Margaret’s godfather, otherwise not sure what his connection with the family was – but he hadn’t brought Margaret with him from London. She had the flu and couldn’t come. Nevertheless she turns up shortly afterwards, and appears to be the career woman type; smart suit, acts superior, and appears rather unemotional. During a chat with her sister, which starts out as a confrontation and ends up as a heart-to-heart, she confesses that she’d had a child by an American soldier she’d fallen in love with during the war. The soldier died, and after a few years the child also died, of meningitis. As she was an unmarried mother, she felt she couldn’t tell their father, and so she rarely came to visit. Her problem now is that she can’t face the prospect of coming back to stay with her father and living a lie for the rest of her life.

After dinner, Margaret and Michael head off for the cinema, while the others sit around and ‘chat’. Lydia and Bridget have decided that for Jenny to find happiness, the vicar will have to retire. He’s not keen on that idea, so they have to tell him about Jenny’s situation. To add to his troubles, Michael and Margaret come home well sozzled; she faints and is taken up to bed. Michael tries to cover it up, but it’s no good. He makes some comment about nobody being able to tell the vicar anything, and also heads for bed.

The next day, Christmas, brings more revelations. The vicar persuades Michael to reveal all he knows (Margaret spilled the beans to him the night before in the pub), and so the scene is set for the final showdown between father and daughter. It goes quite well, remarkably. Since he already knows the story, it’s more a case of sorting out their relationship. It’s clear that personal relationships have never been his strong suit, and he’s aware that his parishioners don’t get as much pastoral care from him as he feels he should have been giving. With Margaret on the point of leaving (they had trains on Christmas day back then!), he finally manages to connect with her, and for the first time in their lives, they actually talk to each other like normal human beings. This changes her attitude so much that she’s quite happy to stay now and take care of the old man, and when David turns up to get Jenny’s final answer, she can give him the ‘yes’ they both wanted.

It’s an interesting play, though not the best written. The dialogue is stilted at times, and the structure feels unbalanced; we get to know Jenny so much more than Margaret, yet Margaret and her experiences are really the key to the whole piece. The vicar’s attitudes are also very important, but again I don’t feel they come across strongly enough for the final confrontation to be as moving as it could have been. I was very moved to realise that this man has only just found out that he had a grandchild and lost it as well, but this was only a passing thought, when it could have been more prominent. The play is still enjoyable, but not as strong as some.

In terms of the performances, the aunts and cousin Richard (now I’ve checked the program I know how he fits in) were the strongest and most entertaining. The others were mostly fine, but Philip Madoc, fine actor though he is, didn’t seem able to get the lines across clearly in the Irish accent he was putting on. Not that there was anything wrong with his accent as such, though at times I sensed the lilting Welsh straining to burst through, but his delivery was so abrupt that I couldn’t distinguish the words. When he spoke more slowly, as he did after the final scene with Margaret, it was fine. It’s always a shame to lose so much dialogue, and I would like to see this play sometime with the father’s part more strongly cast, though as it’s not the greatest play I’m not sure who would put that on. So on the whole I enjoyed the evening, our last but one up at Guildford this year.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Far From The Madding Crowd – November 2008

6/10

By Thomas Hardy, adapted by Mark Healy

Directed by Kate Saxon

ETT and Exeter Northcott

Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Tuesday 11th November 2008

Oh, the perils of expectations! We had seen this same creative team do a wonderful production of The French Lieutenant’s Woman back in September 2006. I had also read this book and seen the film, plus another adaptation, so I clearly didn’t manage to reset my expectation meter to zero before the off. It’s a pity, as I would probably have found it more enjoyable, though not hugely, I suspect. The adaptation and production were pretty good, much higher than my rating for the performance, but there were problems above and beyond any I brought with me.

To begin with, the set was good, similar to The French Lieutenant’s Woman, with a raised platform to the right, and a lower platform to the left. This had an area with removable covers which held water for washing, sheep dipping, etc. There was one large arch which spanned the stage diagonally and suggested a barn, and other poles and planks with tree trunks interspersed among them, so there was plenty of scope for the different locations, though not always enough clarity, I felt. For the fire scene and the saving of the hay ricks from the storm, the cast brought on ladders which could be inserted into holes in the stage to keep them upright as the actors clambered all over them, while sound and lighting effects suggested the rest. I found these bits very effective. There were also some chairs, tables and benches brought on as required, but mostly the action was pretty free-flowing, with actors in one scene moving amongst the actors in another scene quite effectively.  Sheep were not present, either actual or fake, so the actors had to do a lot of miming, but again this worked well.

We may have felt less involved because we were too much to one side, but on the whole I think the main difficulties with this production were the lack of sparkle, and the casting of the main part. Bathsheba Everdene simply has to stand out in a crowd. It doesn’t always have to be down to looks, although some beauty is preferable, but her personality must command the stage. Ensemble acting is all very well, but this is one part that requires a kind of star quality, and tonight we just didn’t get that. I felt that this Bathsheba wouldn’t have stood out in a crowd of three, and that meant I couldn’t feel for her plight in being a guy magnet. The other actors did their best – Phil Cheadle as Gabriel Oak was the best for us – but the whole performance was generally dull. Also, the accents being used were no doubt very accurate, but I lost at least half of the dialogue because of it, and even Steve had difficulties following it all. There was little humour, which always helps things along, and some of the little dances they did to symbolise something or other left me cold. I suspect this adaptation could work better with stronger casting and perhaps a less cluttered set, but I also recognise that these kinds of stories, as well as being incredibly difficult to condense into a manageable length for the stage, are not my favourite type of tale. So, some good points, but overall a bit dull.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Liberty – October 2008

5/10

By Glyn Maxwell, based on the novel by Anatole France

Directed by Guy Retallack

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Friday 24th OCtober 2008

We enjoyed this a lot more than the critics, apparently, even though the audience numbers were sadly depleted. It’s a play about the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, and although I knew a bit about it – guillotine, tricoteuses, new calendar, etc. – I wasn’t up to speed on most of the play’s content, which made it an interesting evening if nothing else.

The play is based on a novel by Anatole France, and uses six of his main characters who represent the different ways in which the French people were affected by, and responded to, the Revolution. One, Evariste Gamelin, is selected to become a magistrate, and we see him evolve from being an idealist who fervently believes in the promises of the Revolution to a fanatic who sends people to their death because that’s the only way for the Revolution to set people free. He’s a nutter, basically, but this play does show how people can become corrupted when they believe their cause is just.

He takes up with a pretty young embroidress, Elodie, and his brainwashing turns  her into a zombie, spouting Revolutionist slogans. She’s rescued by the end of the Terror, and returns to something like normality. Gamelin’s main friend is Philippe, a chap who’s happy to take advantage of the opportunities that abound when there’s a war, and who’s eventually arrested for profiteering. He actually manages to survive the Terror, but Gamelin is not so lucky. The magistrates are being informed against on a regular basis, and so despite his purity and dedication to the cause, he too is taken away and killed.

There’s also an actress friend of Philippe’s, called Rose Clebert, and she suffers through the shutting of the theatres and the banning of any “improper” plays. As she used to play aristocrats, she’s in danger of being seen as one of them, especially when she comes to the aid of Maurice, a former aristocrat who now lodges with Gamelin. She and Maurice were partners in a game the friends were all playing at the picnic which forms the opening scene. That scene doesn’t include the game itself, but it’s often referred to in later scenes. Maurice (a lovely performance by John Bett) opened the second half of the play with his puppets, and gets us all to join in while he gets ready for a puppet show. Rose comes along and they get talking, and it’s all good fun, with a lot of laughs and some audience participation. Then two citizen soldiers arrive and start throwing their weight around, and the whole scene becomes very unpleasant. They make Maurice shag one of his puppets, and Rose might be on the menu as well, but fortunately Gamelin comes along and sends the men packing. It’s only a temporary reprieve however, as both Rose and Maurice are arrested, with Maurice not surviving to the end. Losing him is tough for her, and she ends up reading his book instead of joining in the parties and fun that Philippe and Elodie are off to.

There’s one final character, played by Belinda Lang, who is Louise Rochemaure, a female wheeler-dealer who spends all her time hatching schemes and trying to get to know the people in power. Through Gamelin, whose appointment to the bench she has orchestrated, she gets to know Marat, and is just about to pull off a big coup when someone kills him in his bath, and she’s suddenly up in front of the courts and not doing very well from the sound of it. She also doesn’t survive.

I enjoyed a lot of this play, not least the performances and the humour. I thought the historical information was put into the dialogue very well, and there were only a couple of places where it seemed a bit like a lecture. I could relate to the characters pretty well, especially Maurice and Rose, and I liked the change from humour and fun to seriousness and menace in that opening to the second half. It took a while to get going, and although I could see why the author wanted to start with the picnic scene, I felt that it was too loose somehow to really engage me. Something seemed to be missing, though I couldn’t say what. The audience did its best to make up for lack of numbers, and I hope the cast were as happy with our performance this evening as we were with theirs.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Absurd Person Singular – October 2008

8/10

By Alan Ayckbourn

Directed by Alan Strachan

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Monday 13th October 2008

I liked this even more than I expected to. As is typical of Ayckbourn, this is a very good comedy, and this production is very well cast, so we had a great time.

The play covers three consecutive Christmas Eve gatherings, but we see only the kitchens. The first act is in the kitchen of Jane (Sara Crowe) and Sidney (Matthew Cottle); she’s into cleaning, he’s a handy man with a general store. They’re social climbers who are social misfits in terms of the people they’ve invited over for drinks. They’re so nervous that they end up behaving in completely bizarre ways, such as standing outside in the rain so as not to let on that you’ve had to go out and get some tonic water.

The second kitchen belongs to Eva (Honeysuckle Weeks) and Geoffrey (Marc Bannerman), and is a total mess. Eva doesn’t say a word until she starts singing at the end of the scene, having spent most of it trying to commit suicide and being hampered by the well-meaning assistance of her guests for the evening. Jane cleans her cooker, Sidney attempts to unblock her sink, and Ronald tries to repair the ceiling light fitting, electrocuting himself in the process. It’s darker than the first scene (and not just because the lights go out), but incredibly funny as well, for all the misery. Honeysuckle Weeks showed remarkable agility in taking all sorts of tumbles.

The third scene is set in Marion (Deborah Grant) and Ronald’s (David Griffin) kitchen. Here the social turnaround is complete, as Jane and Sidney are doing very well now his business has taken off, while Marion’s alcoholism is rampant and Ronald the bank manager is having to suck up to his most important customer, Sidney. Geoffrey also needs Sidney’s help, as he’s an architect who could do with some work from the new shopping centre/megastore Sidney’s involved in.

The humour is only partly about the social manoeuvrings, though. There’s a lot of physical comedy, especially in the second act when Eva is trying to kill herself and nobody notices. She keeps leaving goodbye notes on the kitchen table, only for the other characters to grab a bit of paper for something, and so she has to do it all again. Finally she skewers the note to the table with an enormous knife, before attempting to hang herself from the light fitting. This is what leads Ronald to attempt to fix the light fitting, as they all assume that that was what she was trying to do. It’s a really funny scene, which is amazing given the subject matter, and full of wonderful comic touches, such as Eva picking the clothes pegs off the washing line to get her rope.

The final act gives Marion a chance to play grab-the-gin-bottle, which was brilliantly funny, but otherwise it’s much darker, as the characters who were on top in the first act now find themselves at the mercy of the ever cheerful Jane and Sidney. They’re the kind of people who don’t go away when there’s no response to the doorbell; they just sneak round the back to see if they can find a way in. Definitely a reason to book a holiday abroad, but make sure they’re not going to do the same thing first!

It was a good fun evening, and I enjoyed seeing an earlier Ayckbourn again.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

An Ideal Husband – October 2008

6/10

By Oscar Wilde

Directed by Mark Piper (original direction directed by Peter Hall)

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Friday 10th October 2008

This was a revival of the production which toured some time ago, I believe. I thought we had seen it then, but I can’t find any sign of it in our records. Anyway, this revival showed what a good production it was, but sadly the cast didn’t quite match the standard of the original. Tony Britton, although good enough in the later scenes, especially when he could sit down, was struggling to keep up earlier on, while the amount of cosmetic surgery on display for some of the women was a bit of a distraction. Fenella Fielding, in particular, no longer has any elasticity whatsoever, and delivered her lines as carefully as though they might rip something essential. Her timing was still good though, and she got some good laughs, but the power has gone and exits and entrances have to be planned well in advance. Kate O’Mara has still got both power and agility, though her elasticity is also long gone, and the customary lying about one’s age which is so prevalent in Wilde’s work was more a case of necessity here.

Apart from these performances, the actors were still good enough for the parts, although older than one might wish in some cases. Steve reckoned the cast was about ten years too old, and I would tend to agree with that assessment. I do hate making these points, but I decided these notes would be warts-and-all, so that’s how it is. Michael Praed gave signs of being able to cope with more than he was given to do, as did Robert Duncan, and Carol Royle was fine as the morally righteous wife whose idealistic temperament is put to the test. There was good support from the other cast members, as society gents and ladies, and Isla Carter did a fine job as Mabel, the young sister who gets Lord Goring in the end. So even though the performance would have benefitted greatly from some fresh blood, we did still enjoy ourselves tonight.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Brief Lives – September 2008

6/10

By John Aubrey, adapted and directed by Patrick Garland

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Monday 22nd September 2008

Roy Dotrice’s John Aubrey is a delightful old codger, busily complaining about how the country has gone to the dogs, and telling us it wasn’t like that in Queen Elizabeth’s day. As he wasn’t even born in Queen Elizabeth’s day, this was funnier than it might seem. He had a sweet old man laugh – a ‘he-he-he’ – that was funny and endearing.

Set in Aubrey’s lodgings in London during the 1690s, the old man takes us on a general ramble through events throughout his life, including the Civil War and his early days and education. There are stories of folk remedies and strange cures by doctors, and a delicacy of vocabulary when referring to “ravishing”. Sex is fine, apparently, but “ravishing” is not to be taken lightly. There’s a lot of humour in his clumsiness – throwing his warm milk over his shoulder as he tells a story, for example – and in the general squalor and unsanitary conditions of the time. Was that a rat he fished out of his chamber pot, drowned? Actually, no, it was the end of his belt, but it could well have been a rat in that place.

In the second half he told us some stories of real people, some better known than others, and mixing well known history with juicy bits of gossip. Throughout the play there were noises from the street and the flat above, which fed into the stories or at least into his grumbling. It was enjoyable, but seemed a bit dated, although I don’t mind seeing a more gentle form of entertainment such as this from time to time.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

My Brilliant Divorce – September 2008

7/10

By Geraldine Aron

Directed by Tim Luscombe

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Monday 15th September 2008

This was effectively a one-woman show, as I don’t really count the dog. Dillie Keane, as Angela, takes us on a tour of the ups and downs of an abrupt separation and divorce from a man who wants a younger model of wife. There’s some of the emotional suffering, but mostly it’s a humorous trip, with Angela, the daughter of a doctor, finding her new soul mate in one of the unlikeliest places.

The set was pretty bare, with just a table and chair, and there were back projections which made the setting clear, but it was really all about the central performance. I’ve enjoyed Dillie Keane before, though not in the biblical sense, and expect to enjoy her again next year with Fascinating Aida. Her performance tonight didn’t disappoint. She gave us a range of voices and accents, and her comic timing was impeccable. A very enjoyable evening.

© 2008 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