Theatre
Curtains (Hampstead)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (Barbican)
Problem granny
Christopher Edwards
Stephen Bill's new play is a combination of black comedy and discussion piece. The subject of most of the humour is death; the `issue' debated is euthanasia.
When the curtain goes up we are pre- sented with a family gathering (guiltily) for Ida's 86th birthday party. Most of them have neglected the old lady in some way. Surrounding her at the start are her two daughters Margaret and Katherine, their respective husbands, and a yoting grandson Michael. Missing is Ida's errant youngest daughter Susan who ran away 25 years ago and who turns up just in time to see her mother before Ida is done away with. The characters are rapidly and skilfully sketch- ed. Margaret (Sheila Ballantine) is a self- centred patronising snob — amazed that anyone should find her at all difficult to get on with. Douglas (Alfred Lynch), her husband, finds her insufferable. For some reason we are told that he used to be a member of the Red Arrows before he took up farming with his wife. Perhaps we are meant to feel sorry for him and his lost dynamic past. His wife, however, ensures that Douglas earns all the pity he could possibly require. Then there is Katherine (Bridget Turner) and her faint-hearted husband Geoffrey, played by Ralph Nos- sek — an actor who brings a new, almost ecstatic dimension to the spectacle of moral paralysis. If, by any chance, a new television satire is being planned with British Telecom as its target, here is a natural star for the role of chairman. The grandson, meanwhile, represents the play's youthful voice of irreverence; he, at least, is not constrained by his lower-middle-class origins from calling a spade, or even a dying grandmother, by their true names. Not even his bluntness, however, stretches to any suggestion that the old lady should be put out of her misery. This is left to his mother, Katherine.
Centre stage stands the wheelchair con- taining the crumpled form of Ida (Gwenn Nelson). This actress gives a fine, sugges- tive portrait of extreme old age. Her performance is delivered from the very edge of dementia — that vantage point for actors so richly exploited, for both its comedy and pathos, by Ralph Richardson in his later years. Does Ida really know what is going on? Is that quizzical raising of an eyebrow, that vague air of bemusement, just senile confusion or do they suggest some judgment on the gabbling crew of relatives about her? How are we, or her daughter Katherine, meant to interpret her half-gestures or the insistent request `Please' that she delivers towards the end of Act One?
It turns out that Katherine made a promise to help kill her mother if the pain became too bad or the only choice was a nursing home. A typical, black comic scene ends the act and Ida's life — a Sainsbury's plastic bag thrust, ridiculously, over her head, pills rammed down her throat and then the final, the unexpectedly final, success with the cushion. We miss Ida.
After a ludicrously funny attempt by the family at a cover-up, Ida's place is taken by a familiar moral argument about whether her death was right or wrong. Stephen Bill has little new to say and what is said is sententiously set out in a debate between Michael and Douglas, with an aghast Katherine chipping in on the side of the sanctity of life. Alfred Lynch does his best to bring the pro-euthanasia lobby to life it is always a fine sight when this actor's face wakes up, as it were, from the wrinkled, unmade bed in which it was laid by nature. Meanwhile, Katherine, touching and amusing as she is, finds a note of hysteria (understandable perhaps) but holds it for a little too long.
Ultimately the play, like Ida, goes on too long for its own good. Gratuitous biog- raphical odds and ends are thrown in, it seems, just to make up the allotted time. But, even with its faults, this must count as a promising London debut by the play- wright. And the performances of a first- rate cast, directed by Stuart Burge, always remain worth watching.
There is just space to recommend the RSC's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream which has now transferred from Stratford to London. Apart from its essen- tial charm and good humour, it possesses the virtue of letting the play speak for itself. The director (Bill Alexander) has not gone seeking after novelty, governing concepts, psychological frameworks etc. Even the usual post-Brook doubling up of Theseus/Hippolyta and Oberon/Titania is eschewed. This production proves what most of us already know — that when the director is not busy drawing attention to himself, the plays can look after them- selves.
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