Lingua Franca

Synopsis

Lingua Franca follows innocent abroad, Steven Flowers, as he travels from National Service in South-East Asia to 1950’s Florence. He soon finds himself working for a chaotically-run language school, together with a cosmopolitan muddle of seven foreign misfits killing their post-war nihilism in the cafés of Florence, the cradle of Renaissance high culture. Based around a leading character in Peter Nichols’ acclaimed work Privates on Parade, and inspired by his own experiences, Lingua Franca is a fast-paced, sexually-charged story, and both a damning indictment and a celebration of sexual freedom. Playing with notions of xenophobia and deep-seated cultural stereotypes, nationalist foibles and prejudices clash and sparkle to high comic effect as Steven tries to make sense of his own life and a Europe at peace after so many years of war.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 19 July 2010

It is impossible to tell when Peter Nichols might have written Lingua Franca: at any time in the past thirty years, as it follows the Nichols alter ego, Steven Flowers, from National Service duty and revues in Malaysia with Stanley Baxter and Kenneth Williams – the material of his unbeatable Privates on Parade – to his experience in a British language school in Florence in the mid 1950s.

The play surfaced in a student production at RADA last year, and the same director, Michael Gieleta, has assembled an outstanding cast for this Finborough revamp: Chris New as the  Berlitz virgin, holding up cutlery (“Is this a knife”; “No, this is a fork”) to a classroom of insolent “bambini”; Natalie Walter as the siren German, Heidi, whom he seduces in a rush of revenge for the war; and Charlotte Randle as the plainer English girl, Peggy, who carries a torch for him and, as it happens, a knife, too.

Using a mixture of direct address, cross-cutt...

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Latest User Review

Gareth James - 28 July 2010:

3 for the play, but 4 for the production and performances! Peter Nichols’ playwriting career is a real puzzle to me. Between 1969 and 1982 London saw almost a play each year. He was one of the freshest, most inventive and funny writers around. In the last 28 years we’ve had no new plays and a handful of revivals, two at the Donmar and one elsewhere in the West End. Apparently he has a drawer full of unproduced work and I understand his take on it is that he’s been deserted by institutions like the NT and RSC who had earlier championed his work. So I jumped at the chance to see this new Nichols play at the tiny Finborough; the stellar cast was a bonus. Set in a language school on post-war Florence, it explores the lives of its Italian administrator and expatriate teachers; the students are just off-stage voices. The central character is new boy Steven (passionately played by Chris New) who may be autobiographical (in which case Nichols has written himself as a bit of a shit!). He is stalked by infatuated Peggy (Charlotte Randle no less) but beds holocaust-denying Heidi (well-played by Natalie Walter) who had the attentions of administrator Gennaro (an excellent performance from Enzo Cilenti, whose name suggests he’s well qualified to play it!) before an anti-semitic rant. Add to the cocktail Abigail McKern’s terrifically plain speaking Aussie, Ian Gelder’s very English Italophile (who makes no compromises for living in Italy) and Rula Lenska, perfectly cast as an elegant smokey-voiced Russian, and you have a fascinating cast of characters. The play is an interesting look at sensibilities in post-war Europe, but the narrative doesn’t really live up to the excellent characterisation. The dramatic flow is damaged by a profusion of very short scenes and monologues and the play doesn’t really go anywhere, though it’s an interesting slice-of-life set in a period few have dramatised. Designer James Macnamara has worked wonders with four shutters and some projections and director Michael Gieleta uses the tiny space well, with a ‘sound scape’ for the city and the students. Still, I’d rather be in the sweaty Finborough watching a cast any West End producer would be proud of put on a play that’s better than any new play the National have done recently whilst they (and the Donmar) are pre-occupied with pointless revivals of 19th century German mediocrity. On this form, I think I’m inclined to side with Mr Nichols....

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