SLY USEFUL OBSERVATION…MARRIAGE OF EQUALS
Noel Coward was a lad of 18 when he finished this very adult portrait of a marriage in trouble, invalided out of the army, nervous and tubercular. But he had been a dangerously observant child actor since he was eleven: perfectly placed , with childlike dispassion, to portray a pair of writers whose romantic passion and determination to be different for ordinary boring couples, but whose nature and talent sours into married rivalry and rows. Well, after all the referee sees most of the game…
He thought the play immature, but it’s none the worse for that: indeed for Troupe – after their magnificent Forsyte Saga here which the RSC picked up – it is a clever choice. I seem to have scrawled in my notebook early on the words “adorably relatable”. Unlike some of his later more high-society plays, with guaranteed success and silk dressing-gowns,, it’s set amid absolute beginners. Sheila , an aspiring novelist and her flatmate Olive, a journalist, we meet first on the eve of Sheila’s wedding to Keld – who is writing a first play. Ewan Miller is a boyish, exuberant Keld, Lily Nichol’s Sheila more serious, rangy, thoughtful. Theyre starry eyed but Olive (Gina Bramhill, briskly sophisticated) warns her that when two creative careers and intellects marry, one is going to have to give up a bit of personality to keep the peace. Sheila of course denies this. Relatable? They could be any set of ambitious young media or theatre types right now.
And as they get going in the second act, it’s blissfully Coward (though Bill Rosenfield has “reimagined” it a bit, cutting down some exuberant overwriting). The gasps and guffaws kept coming, as all ages and both sexes recognized, as did the artful teenage Coward, where he pressure points would come. Keld is at his desk with the only typewriter, constantly enraged by the servant – Angela Sims a wonderfulky realized Burrage – wants to know about the mutton for dinner. His sacred creative flame must not be disturbed. Except by the pink-flounced fur-tuppeted Ruby Raymond, his proposed star who is keen to get out of musical comedy to the real stage. Zoe Goriely performs the most poisonous starlet imaginable, harder-treated than anyone else in Coward . Well, he was young. But of course when his wife Sheila nips in to borrow a pencil for her own writing, he’s enraged again by the disturbance, and the whole thing erupts into a foreshadowing of the big row in Private Lives. Especially when she points out the flaws in his characteirzation of women. That’s glorious.
Totally in lovewith it by now, I winced a bit at the third act, in which two successes later Keld’s confidence has somehow sapped all of Sheila’s, who gives up writing to be a supportive wife: a wonderful sequence has her discussing laundry problems with Burrage while he reads out starry reviews of his brilliance feom the papers then loses his temper because the women aren’t listening. Miller’s strength as Keld is persuading us that he is not, in fact, any kind of monster. Just young. Of course worse is to come, as Olive reappears from a sparky career in showbiz and social gossip writing, and reveals somethig. Not an entirely surprising twist; but come to the short fourth act, and we really are surprised.
No spoilers, but it’s a distinctly odd ending: , Coward himself said…”The last act is an inconclusive shambles” based on a “sentimental and inaccurate assumption” about married couples. Never mind, Noel. It was a really fun evening. Maybe even definitely one for a cautionary stag and hen night….
parktheatre.co.uk to 14 March
rating 4
theatreCat 