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Newcastle-under-Lyme.
DANGEROUS CORNER
by J B Priestley
New Vic Theatre To 18 October 2008.
Ruins 2hr 10min One interval.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 18 October.
Dangerous Corner receives a safe revival.
Closeness between audience and stage is a claimed advantage of Theatre in the Round. But Joanna Read’s revival of J B Priestley’s 1932 dramatic debut consciously provides separation. The action’s islanded on a lightly-raised platform, its edges lapped by white wisps suggesting a society shut away in storage. Its members are seen in a freeze-frame tableau before the action starts.
Once it does there’s an overly-conscious style to the performances, as if the actors are playing a period idea rather than individuals. It gives a forced jollity to the early minutes, before a chance turn in the after-dinner conversation and the production of a musical cigarette-box begins opening up a complex of unhappiness and secret desires beneath the happy surface.
Two intermarried families here belong to the publishing world; only their novelist client Miss Mockeridge is immune from the emotional furnace Priestley stokes up. One of his few unbelievable elements is that this experienced, successful writer wouldn’t understand the significance of ‘The Sleeping Dog’ as title of the radio play being listened to at the start – although the characters missed five scenes during dinner.
That sense of partial knowledge and understanding runs through the play, which questions how much truth helps, or merely hurts. Flavoured with a continuing thread of investigation (its, very different, dramatic parallel for relentless plot logic is The Importance of Being Earnest) that gives his play a West End intrigue, Priestley investigates, like Ibsen in Wild Duck, the damage undiluted truth can do.
Then he turns back the narrative clock, showing how different things might be. In 1932 it must have seemed a neat device; in view of his later fascination with concepts of circular time and the possibility of altering outcomes (I Have Been Here Before would explore this later in the decade) it is more than that.
If a cigarette-box led to trouble, a wireless prevents it second-time around. It’s a pity Read’s competently-played production doesn’t allow Priestley’s end to speak, or dance, for itself, but stops the sociable whirl whose characters don’t know what they’ve just missed with a directorial slow-motion, downbeat addition.
Miss Mockeridge: Katherine Barker.
Betty Whitehouse: Amy Brown.
Olwen Peel: Nia Gwynne.
Charles Stanton: Jason Haigh.
Freda Caplan: Lucinda Milward.
Gordon Whitehouse:Joseph Pitcher.
Robert Caplan: James Rochfort.
Director: Joanna Read.
Designer: Nancy Surman.
Lighting: Daniella Beattie.
Sound: James Earls Davis.
Choreographer: Beverley Edmunds.
Voice coach: Caroline Hetherington.
Fight director: Kate Waters.
DANGEROUS CORNER
by J B Priestley
New Vic Theatre To 18 October 2008.
Ruins 2hr 10min One interval.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 18 October.
Dangerous Corner receives a safe revival.
Closeness between audience and stage is a claimed advantage of Theatre in the Round. But Joanna Read’s revival of J B Priestley’s 1932 dramatic debut consciously provides separation. The action’s islanded on a lightly-raised platform, its edges lapped by white wisps suggesting a society shut away in storage. Its members are seen in a freeze-frame tableau before the action starts.
Once it does there’s an overly-conscious style to the performances, as if the actors are playing a period idea rather than individuals. It gives a forced jollity to the early minutes, before a chance turn in the after-dinner conversation and the production of a musical cigarette-box begins opening up a complex of unhappiness and secret desires beneath the happy surface.
Two intermarried families here belong to the publishing world; only their novelist client Miss Mockeridge is immune from the emotional furnace Priestley stokes up. One of his few unbelievable elements is that this experienced, successful writer wouldn’t understand the significance of ‘The Sleeping Dog’ as title of the radio play being listened to at the start – although the characters missed five scenes during dinner.
That sense of partial knowledge and understanding runs through the play, which questions how much truth helps, or merely hurts. Flavoured with a continuing thread of investigation (its, very different, dramatic parallel for relentless plot logic is The Importance of Being Earnest) that gives his play a West End intrigue, Priestley investigates, like Ibsen in Wild Duck, the damage undiluted truth can do.
Then he turns back the narrative clock, showing how different things might be. In 1932 it must have seemed a neat device; in view of his later fascination with concepts of circular time and the possibility of altering outcomes (I Have Been Here Before would explore this later in the decade) it is more than that.
If a cigarette-box led to trouble, a wireless prevents it second-time around. It’s a pity Read’s competently-played production doesn’t allow Priestley’s end to speak, or dance, for itself, but stops the sociable whirl whose characters don’t know what they’ve just missed with a directorial slow-motion, downbeat addition.
Miss Mockeridge: Katherine Barker.
Betty Whitehouse: Amy Brown.
Olwen Peel: Nia Gwynne.
Charles Stanton: Jason Haigh.
Freda Caplan: Lucinda Milward.
Gordon Whitehouse:Joseph Pitcher.
Robert Caplan: James Rochfort.
Director: Joanna Read.
Designer: Nancy Surman.
Lighting: Daniella Beattie.
Sound: James Earls Davis.
Choreographer: Beverley Edmunds.
Voice coach: Caroline Hetherington.
Fight director: Kate Waters.