[El Peter]

I've seen 'Jingo' recently too, Ms X. After you've registered, which is a simple process, let's discuss the play.

[Jenny_tyr]

Come on El Peter, that was a perfectly nice and well articulated post, is it really less valid as a point of view to discuss simply because it was posted by an unregistered guest?

//Jenny

[Ms X]

Now registered!

Never bothered before because I've been using this site for a while with the same username and just found it easier not to, but apologies if this has annoyed anyone.

Thanks for the nice replies!

[El Peter]

Welcome on board, Ms X. I won't be the only one pleased that you have signed up and so allow us to attach a name to each of your contributions when you sign in in the future. Ms X is a name with a beautiful simplicity: well chosen

I was fascinated that someone had come on to the board so soon about 'Jingo', being staged at a theatre that must surely hold only about 50 people at a time maximum. This play has 'slipped under the radar', Ms X, and I only found out about it because I look at the theatre's website http://www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk/productions_jingo.htm every now and again. However, I didn't think that this play in its preview stage quite worked, though its problems may have been solved by now.

Yet again I was impressed with what the Finborough managed to do with set design in a tight space that somehow seemed larger than I'd seen it before. So we learn that it is wartime, the Brits hold colonial possession Singapore, and the Japanese are coming to try to take it, yet there were times in the second half of the play when I wasn't sure where exactly action was set or whether days, weeks or months were passing by. Rather than that first half faffing about with scene changes that don't really indicate night or day changes in effect — try putting on a couple of sidelamps or turning them off and removing them! — it was the second half that needed occasional indicators as to where in time and place we now were. When I saw it, the drama eventually died in the second half. This was defeat and occupation presumably, the twittering character indicated imperial impotence, fine, but, having made its point, he twittered on far too often thereafter. It was two hours including a 15-20 minute break whereas it needed to be 90 minutes maximum with either a swift move-on, or cuts, to be made to the second half.

When the play opened and Susannah Harker as Gwendoline addressed the audience, I thought she and the writing were witty, impressive and intriguing as to what would follow. The audience being so close, such performances could be savoured. I liked the other actors who between them have substantial stage, screen and radio studio backgrounds, and it showed. Once again, the Finborough attracts the talent.

I'd only ever heard of this mid-1970s play, so I welcome its revival, but I was sorry that in today's Guardian Guide, for example, another production the theatre is presenting is listed, but not this one. The writer, Charles Wood, has an outstanding record of stage plays and films, and here is one of his plays at one of London's most interesting theatres.

[Queenie]

I saw Jingo this week and found it an utterly bizarre experience.

The writing was positively schizophrenic! One moment it was trying to be a Noel Coward-esque piece with witty bon mots, then a harrowing indictment of war, and then an out and out farce. If the shifts in tone were deliberate, they need to be directed by a far more assured hand to avoid the cast looking at sea.

I likes Susannah Harker very much, but thought Peter Sandys-Clarke was utterly miscast as her husband: they looked like mother and son! And he seemed very uncomfortable physically and fumbled the physical comedy he was required to do. I could see a James Fleet-type "silly ass" in the role - and Sandys-Clarke looked out of his depth.

The 20 or so people in the audience looked utterly bewildered by the whole thing. It really didn't know what it was trying to say in my view.

[El Peter]

Interesting, Queenie, for it had all those elements to which you refer. I wonder if they did do something with the second half. What length was the play when you saw it recently?

[Queenie]

Hi Peter

It doesn't sound as if anything has changed since you saw it in preview. The running time is the same, and all the points and criticisms you made were still pertinent when I saw it on Wednesday last.