Theatre
Look Look (Aldwych)
Audience reaction
Christopher Edwards
Michael Frayn is a distinguished fi- gure in the world of journalism and letters. This sounds like the kind of appreciative introduction a reviewer sets up in order to prepare the way for a regretful notice . . . `unfortunately not at characteristic best here . . . bit of a let-down after brilliant success of Noises Off . . .' etc. Regretful disappointment would seem to have been the general tone of the critical reaction to his new play, Look Look. You can see why.
For the piece is certainly a slighter work than Noises Off. Whereas that essentially farcical piece took us backstage, Look Look offers us a perspective from the front of the house. So, the curtain goes up to reveal to the seated Aldwych Theatre audience — an Aldwych Theatre audience filing into their seats.
Frayn's cross-section of a West End audience is conveniently wide. We have Amanda and Charles, an adulterous young couple of City workers, a prim middle- aged woman, Helena, with her surburban mother, a newly wed old American couple on their 'sunset' honeymoon, a gay drama teacher with a distinctly heterosexual young student, a working-class family tak- ing the daughter out for a birthday treat. And the playwright, played by Stephen Fry, is also here, sitting in on the perform- ance. In exasperation he finds that audi- ences, perversely, have a life of their own. They fidget, eat chocolates, arrive late. Worst of all, they do not laugh or cry at the right places. We both hear what these characters say to each other and overhear what they are thinking to themselves as the play they have come to see gets going.
The first half is adroitly done. Frayris observation is very acute and funny. In- terest focuses mainly upon the young adulterers (Serena Gordon and Michael Simkins), who, to their horror, are recog- nised by Gabrielle Drake's prim Helena. As Helena's own husband is supposed to be at the same meeting as the philanderer sitting next ' to her, she stalls to imagine that her husband is up to the same tricks.
In • Act Two, Frayn takes his audience into the play they have been watching. It is an absurd piece of sentimental melodrarnp whose conventions Frayn sends up with relish; the ice cream props go wrong, a gun goes missing at the crucial time, the death throes of the hammy leading man are absurd. This is pretty routine stuff from the author of Noises Off, and, in truth, he tries to cram too much in. The results are a bit bewildering at times. But what is successful is the way he manages to turn the terrible melodrama — where the cast worry about their lines and where they should be standing — into an overheated projection of the anxieties of the characters we met earlier as members of an audience.
An exercise of this nature, where illusion and reality are made to Overlap, inevitably makes you think of Pirandello. There are echoes too, perhaps, of Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound. What I liked about Look Look, however, were its distinctly Fraynian qualities. It is a clever play, but its cleverness is quite un-self-regarding. Its wit is genial, its understanding of character acute but lightly delivered. It was too much to expect him to produce another Noises Off, and if you go expecting that level of exuberant invention you probably will be disappointed. This is a lesser work if you Wish to judge it by the number of times you laugh out loud. But Frayn is not trying simply to entertain. Perhaps a more serious Criticism might be that the two acts are not integrated sufficiently to give you a sense of a dramatic whole. But even minor Frayn can be interesting. The strong cast at the Aldwych succeed in making it very enjoy- able as well.
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