Pet hates
Lloyd Evans Present Laughter Lyttelton Moonlight and Magnolias Tricycle Dealer's Choice Menier perhaps it was all a joke. In 1939 Noel 1 Coward wrote a play starring a vain, bullying, self-obsessed, misogynistic diva called Garry Essendine Himself, that is, with his worst faults exaggerated. He duly took the role into the West End and everyone duly loved him But all subsequent productions have lacked the magic of Coward's presence. In Howard Davies's revival Alex Jennings very nearly manages the impossible and makes Garry's non-stop narcissism adorable. It's no dishonour that he doesn't succeed.
Garry Essendine is the light comedian's Hamlet. Even the greatest attempts are partial failures. Elsewhere the production isn't well harmonised. Different decades contend with each other. The costumes and furniture are from the 1940s, and Sarah Woodward (excellent as Garry's unflappable secretary) perfectly captures the starchy manners of the war years. But Amy Hall's Daphne is a simpering Marilyn clone of the 1950s and Alex Jennings's balletic Garry has a short back and sides crowned with lush waves like a 1980s pop star. It's Tim Hatley's set that most disrupts the sense of period. Walls ragrolled in sea-green turquoise would never have graced a Belgravia flat.
And yet his design is clever and extraordinarily beautiful. Gorgeous Bohemian clutter creates an air of stylish anarchy, and the proportions are dramatically foreshortened so that as you gaze at the mirrored walls receding strangely to the rear you get a weird Alice in Wonderland lurch in your tummy. The whole apartment cries out to be exhibited alone. And that's the problem.
A set should suggest the atmosphere but it shouldn't be the atmosphere. This one, naughtily, wants to eclipse the production and win gongs of its own.
Nonetheless, this is a fascinating play — often for the wrong reasons. Coward puts all his pet hatreds on view: flappers, impresarios, apprentice writers, serious relationships, heavyweight authors like Ibsen and Brecht, all are pelted with gleeful sponges. He even has a pop at gay men. When Roland Maule the earnest fan makes a suggestive advance Garry crumples up like a salted slug. And it's amazing how little emotional truth there is in the writing. Coward is singularly inept at portraying heterosexual couples. He gives Garry three quite different relationships — a fling, an affair with a colleague's mistress, and a slow rapprochement with his ex-wife — but nowhere does he capture the pulse and rhythm of real lovers engaged in sexual negotiation. Instead he pours out a lot of camp soppiness. It's not a great evening but it is by no means a disaster.
Ron Hutchinson's new play, a backstage comedy about the writing of Gone with the Wind, is an absolute cracker. And it's all true. After a week's filming David 0. Selznick cancelled the shoot, hauled Victor Fleming off The Wizard of Oz and gave him the director's chair, and hired Ben Hecht to write a new screenplay. One snag. Hecht hadn't read the book. Selznick, Fleming and Hecht locked themselves in a room for five days surviving on peanuts and bananas and refusing to budge till they'd finished the script. Meanwhile the stalled production burned up tens of thousands of dollars a day. This is an extraordinary play, a hilarious comedy grounded in real life, and a loving tribute to the passionate egos who create great films. Andy Nyman's memorable Selznick is a mad visionary, terrified of his father-in-law Louis B. Mayer, but determined to create a movie that will match the scale of his dreams. Artist and dictator were never so delightfully mixed. A must for movie-buffs.
At the Menier, Sam West has created a powerful, fleet-footed revival of Dealer's Choice. We're in a swanky bistro and the workforce are preparing for their weekly poker night. It's a bit like a sketch-show, at least in the first halt with the amiable dimwit Mugsy being teased about his plan to convert a public lavatory into a restaurant. 'Good evening, sir, let me show you to your cubicle.'
The arrival of Ash, a professional gambler with a four grand debt to clear, carries the play into darker, more interesting terrain. Roger Lloyd Pack has Ash's skull-like gaze and he gets his menacing weirdness well enough but at times he seems semidetached from the play. Stephen Wight is a superb Mugsy, easily portraying the simple naivety and adding unexpected layers of charm and fervent grace. The great attraction of the play is its exposure of male relationships, its dissection of the bullying that underlies the bonding. The moral is less original. Everyone loses, love is a lie, we're better off dead. Enjoy.
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