Theatre
Sob sisters
Mark Amory
A Star is Torn (Theatre Royal, Stratford East) Talley's Folly (Lyric Hammersmith) Brontosaurus (Lyric Studio)
Robyn Archer has a huge talent but she is not a star. Her decision to sing the songs made famous by the great female stars of this century in their own manner, thus not just inviting but positively demanding com- parison, might then seem foolhardy. In fact she scores a success and that is not the whole of her achievement. She could at will convert that success into a more personal triumph; she chooses not to.
With a jewelled hat here and a gingham frock there, she presents 11 stars who (broadly) used their real vulnerability as part of their appeal, part of the act. In bet- ween songs we are briefly given the dreadful facts about rape, drugs, breakdowns and early death. The nine most famous pro- duced only four children between them (three of them Garland's) in spite of 28 hus- bands. Loneliness is the recurring theme. Archer does not quite present a thesis or a generalisation but even her oblique ap- proach is suggestive and has indeed been at- tacked. Two were killed in air crashes, no more directly caused by their career than might be the fate of a Euro-MP. There are other sorts of female singer, Marlene Dietrich for example, who seem armour- plated and indestructible. Some male stars (but not singers) like Montgomery Clift and James Dean have used vulnerability as part of their appeal and destroyed themselves in ways that would fit the pattern. The perky Marie Lloyd is a curious inclusion even on the vaguest criteria. Still, even when gnawed at the edges, there is a common ex- perience here and the bad times suffered by some passionate and passionately honest singers come through in a dazzling succes- sion of styles.
When Archer starts by conjuring up Bessie Smith with a gravelly growl, some generous arm movements and a waddle, I thought, fine, but what is going to happen when she gets to Monroe? What happened was a triumph not of impersonation but of evocation, so that the audience did the
work, remembering Marilyn f°r themselves. When I was unfamiliar with the original, as with Helen Morgan, the effect was naturally different but felt authentic. Nobody is mocked. That is how she might have notched up a cheaper, noisier success; but there is a steely seriousness and commit' ment that does not allow her to score of her subjects. 'My Boy Bill' could have brought the house down but was made to work as it did originally in a direct sen- timental way — no mean feat. The songs are often wonderful and always skilfullY chosen, the obvious avoided, but an occa- sional dud like 'Smile', surely I8-carat trasheroo, is transmuted into something very like gold. If Judy Garland is the 113- evitable centre, Billie Holiday is my fay' ourite, her Piaf is remarkable, Janis "P. Iin a tour de force and the lesser known Patsy Cline and Jane Froman welcome f°,,rr, that reason. Robyn Archer trampled a" over my prejudice against solo perfor- mances; all the same, someone should now create a full-scale musical to show her off. Jonathan Pryce is not exactly a star either and Hayley Mills put all that behind her when she grew up, like Esther Williams dry- ing herself and getting dressed. Talley's Fol" iy is a naturalistic romance with only characters. A Jewish accountant, Matt Friedman, wishes to marry in 1944 a nuts',, of 31 who lives with her family on a farm near Lebanon, Missouri (`You're not in the South, you're in the Mid-West'). If Dustin Hoffman and the young Katharine HO- burn had played it we would have co, in' plained about the simple merits of the Piece being distorted but it might have been more enjoyable, more lively. Instead we get the cellent performances and the merits of the piece do not seem enough. Jonathan PrYce unleashes as many voices as Robyn Arch?'.. and more jokes without ever losing his grip on the nervous tenacity of his charactete.r Hayley Mills retains our sympathy hot h ,c gift is for ordinariness, so even when it revealed that she had been sacked from t3 ing Sunday School, it was hard to see W"k, her family thought her such an embarrass ment; to be fair an explanation is offered id when she finally has the big monologue we have all known must be coming her waY r sometime (not as long as I expected, g°t was I right in my confident conviction al% her secret was going to be that she had ha an abortion). The set, a crumbling ho t, 110
house at dusk, has been much and ,br
4 praised and bits of it even fall down to give the two of them something to do. All ti'd same, 97 minutes seems a long time .„ari,s the only real surprise in the evening c°1"e in the programme, which says that WI., author, Lanford Wilson, is more .P.ent, formed than Pinter, Ibsen or 1-111,1r,i, Hellman, plans five plays about the Talley family and has had two successes with the', on Broadway already. Wilson Portray:1 himself as a simple country boy and I fe's mean not liking his work more, as if I Via spurning an over-friendly puppy. At lunchtime in their Studio the Lyric of fers another Wilson play, Brontosaurus, It
seems a good idea but both plays suffer a little as he has used an identical structure for a different situation. A religious boy comes from the country to stay in New York with his aunt. Metropolitan to her scarlet finger tips, she is a successful antique dealer, but is she happy? Wilson is nice to his characters but he is no iconoclast; of course she is not, she is lonely as people in cities are supposed to be. She talks all the time, the nephew keeps mum. Peter Jay, accused of being ar- rogant, once suggested to a reporter that this misconception arose because people often did not put their own case in the most effective way and it was necessary to rephrase, before demolishing, their argu- ment. Margaret Robertson, who has a slight look of Irene Worth as well as a similar Power of attack, does this to the poor lad in a skilfully delivered near-monologue, but again the commonplace is not transcended. Though not disagreeable, it remains or- dinary.
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