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If So, Then Yes

Jermyn Street Theatre, Inner London
From: Tuesday, 7th September 2010
To: Saturday, 2 October 2010

Our Review: starstar

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Synopsis

The play charts a day in the life of Simpson’s comic protagonist, octogenarian writer Geoffrey Wythenshaw, who sits down to dictate his autobiography from the comfort of a retirement home for the upper crust. Unfortunately, he finds himself constantly interrupted by his fellow residents, their visiting relatives, and the attending staff. Some seek a share of his wisdom, while others feel compelled to lend a hand in passing the time. Using dialogue that disguises the utterly nonsensical as the patently logical, the play examines with humour and heart what it means to age in contemporary society.

Our Review: starstar

Michael Coveney - 13 September 2010

A surprise revival of two earlier N F Simpson plays at the Donmar Warehouse three years ago reminded us of what we’d been missing for so long: this blissfully funny, now 91 year-old, playwright is still best known for A Resounding Tinkle and One Way Pendulum, both directed by William Gaskill at the Royal Court over fifty years ago.

If So, Then Yes was commissioned by the NT, and emerges in Simon Usher’s rumpled, bumpy world premiere in Jermyn Street as a likeable meditation on death and the afterlife by an old writer in a nursing home.

The world and his wife pay a call, interrupting his dictation, invading the open day and suggesting that Jean-Paul Sartre won the Nobel Prize because of his perfect teeth. And if it’s the divine presence you’re looking for, you’d have to go a long way to beat Clacton, according to one of the cleaners.

It’s wonderful to see the silvery-voiced Roddy Maude-Roxby again as th...

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Creative

N F Simpson (Author)
Presence Theatre (in association with Jermyn Street Theatre) (Company)
Simon Usher (Director)
Anthony Lamble (Design)
Sam Moon (Lighting)

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