The Royal Court’s at it again.
The Royal Court’s at it again. The boss, Dominic Cooke, likes to place his theatre at the disposal of Sloaney young princesses with an itch to write. It’s a great policy — mad, innovative, unpredictable and at times revelatory. Some of these women are seriously talented. Trouble is, Mr Cooke has now glutted the market with a particular brand of upper-class angst. Every month or two we’re invited to witness yet another dark sexual melodrama featuring posh birds in distress.
The latest, by Penelope Skinner, takes us to East Anglia where we meet frustrated Becky, two months pregnant, and her elaborately tedious husband John, an eco-prig and all-round worry guts, who’s gone off sex. ‘I don’t want to kill the baby!’ Becky starts flirting with the plumber, then has an adulterous tumble with Oliver, the village stud. To keep the fun going they turn to role play. She dresses as Lolita and demands a threesome. His fantasies have a weirder tinge. Disguised as a rapist and armed with a lock-knife, he breaks into her kitchen one evening and ravishes her on the draining board while her husband, half-asleep upstairs, calls down for a hot chocolate. ‘You OK down there?’ he asks politely as his wife stifles orgasmic squeals in the arms of her masked seducer.
That’s the mood throughout — silly, charming, crude, insubstantial. Romola Garai, distractingly beautiful, gives a decent showing as Becky, while Dominic Rowan — tufty chest, violent leer — makes a very convincing bit-on-the-side.
Skinner might try harder with her symbolism. Malfunctioning pipes in Becky’s cottage are a crude emblem of marital failure. The initial point of contact between the lovers — a new bike — is equally short of finesse. As is the title. Any sense of the characters’ motivation or emotional awareness is absent until the closing scenes when Oliver’s betrayed wife (played with icy verve by Sasha Waddell) turns up and makes Becky feel the consequences of her nympho antics. But once this interesting detour finishes, the script reverts to its groove of macabre knockabout.
A stale scent of the 1970s hovers over Joe Hill-Gibbins’s production. The plumber is played by Phil Cornwell who made his name impersonating Michael Caine. The broken intimacies of Becky and John feel like a return to George & Mildred. And Dominic Rowan looks exactly like the half-forgotten chat-show charmer, Patrick Mower (who was the Hugh Grant of the Power Cut decade). And the ending? I wasn’t sure what had been resolved or completed. It all just phutted to a standstill. I’m a big admirer of Dominic Cooke and his Kings Road drama queens but this offering was a little meagre.
The latest show at the Arts Theatre has a great poster and a strong title, Park Avenue Cat, with the come-hither strapline, ‘A slinky, sexy new comedy to make you purr.’ The author, Frank Strausser, sounds vaguely familiar. No doubt some big-on-Broadway maestro who never quite registered with the Brits. But no. Strausser’s arrival in the West End is a massive overpromotion. He can’t handle his dramatic materials at all. And his play turns the romcom genre into the riddle of the Sphinx. It’s an absolute brain-boggler.
We have an art dealer, Lily, torn between her current squeeze, Philip, and an old fling, Dorian. She books a double therapy session for herself and Philip but Dorian shows up instead. They revive their affair. Later, she books another therapy session and all three arrive. There are some arguments, some physical fights, some pert comments. Then the lights go out. Is that it? Apparently so. Only the conspicuous clapping of the ushers alerted the audience to the fact that the evening’s entertainment had ended. Not so much a script as a suicide note.
Lovely Josefina Gabrielle — a fine comedian, a fabulous singer and an absolute knockout to look at — couldn’t get any kind of purchase on the cornea-thin caricature of Lily. And the show’s production values are a study in absurdity. The door hinges squeak. There’s no stage manager so the actors have to shift all the furniture around between scenes. The male leads, both expensively dressed, wear no socks. Some of the players can’t do an American accent. And weirdest of all, the therapist’s study has a Cruise missile-sized hole ripped through its back wall to give us an eye-line on an outer corridor.
Someone very rich, or very reckless, has paid for this show. The marketing is excellent, however, and the theatre’s foyer has been stylishly extended on to the pavement in the hope of enticing curious souls off the street. This may be effective. Most tourists go abroad to find something new. And American tourists go abroad to find something American. Here it is. But it’s not worth crossing the road for, never mind the Atlantic.
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