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| Eamonn Flemming. Fiona Wass. Pic: Adrian Gatie |
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September In the Rain (tour)Venue:
Where:
Date Reviewed: 18 September 2001
WOS Rating:
Reader Reviews:
View and add to our user reviewsConstantly recycling the house dramatist's back catalogue has proved a valuable and sensible lifeline down the years for Hull Truck Theatre. But John Godber's feeling that it "seems fitting" to resurrect a 17-year-old apprentice piece to celebrate the theatre's 30th anniversary won't find unananimous jury approval.
The script itself is engaging enough - a nostalgic trawl through 30 Years of a marriage, as epitomised by the annual week's holiday in Blackpool. There Jack and Liz confront all the set pieces the resort is noted for – the donkeys, the tower, the big dipper, the wax works, the amateur operatics show. And through such encounters, they bicker and bark their rough love for each other, honing the marriage over the years, swearing in the early days that every tiff marks the point of no return - and constantly returning.
Along the way they reclaim a stack of old Workers' Playtime jokes about the British seaside holiday ("it only rained once - from Monday to Friday”). They rehearse what might have passed as working class repartee way back when, but tends to come over as dated caricature today. When Liz, queuing, falls to wondering whether she will be physically capable of motherhood and agonises whether she even wants to carry children by this man, the audience falls into silence simply because the shiny carapace of smart dialogue has suddenly been shattered by an unwarranted foray into real feeling. It's a good moment, but one longs for more.
One longs, too, for a bit of movement. What is basically a string of radio sketches seems to cry out for heavy-duty physical theatre production to make it stageworthy. Yet director Nick Lane makes only perfunctory nods in that direction, at times preferring a disruptive blackout to an imaginative physical bridge between episodes. The glorious possibilities of a hair-raising big dipper ride are waved through in seconds, and as the protagonists, both Fiona Wass and Eamonn Fleming are understretched, making little of their sporadic multi-role opportunities. Coming from this address, too, wayward 'stage northern' accents do little credit.
A predominantly grey-haired, Hull audience chuckled merrily enough. But if the boss himself had been on the case, perhaps the actors would have portrayed the truth rather than the lines and we might all have enjoyed a more robust evening.
Ian Watson (reviewed at Hull Truck Theatre)
