A deliciously offensive four-hander comedy by the award-winning Montreal playwright Francois Archambault (translated by Bobby Theodore). A well-heeled, self-obsessed couple, Peter and Mary, invite their fast-living friend over to dump him. But when Mark turns up with his stunning young girlfriend Paula, the dinner party spectacularly nosedives into a drunken swamp of personal revelation and debauchery.
The Leisure Society is a one-act morality play with absolutely no moral compass.
Supermodels Twiggy and Jerry Hall became actors with a fair degree of success, and now the signs seem fairly good for their catwalk junior, 29 year-old Agyness Deyn, who makes a poised and promising stage debut as a free-living sex buddy in a rather shocking comedy of middle-class immorality.
Not least among the points of interest about The Leisure Society is that it comes from Quebecois writer Franҫois Archambault - a Montreal compatriot of Michel Tremblay and Robert Lepage – in a smart translation by Bobby Theodore, directed by a Pinter specialist, Harry Burton, and also starring Ed Stoppard, hotfoot from the new Upstairs Downstairs.
There’s a kind of cultural stamp and vintage about the short 90-minute event in the smaller of the Trafalgar Studios (the coffin, I call it) that is not let down by the reality of the show. Stoppard plays a bored, successful 30-something whose marriage to borderline alcoholic Mary (Melanie Gray) is slipping into boredom.
Their baby screams on the intercom which is placed on the un-played grand piano. They are being interviewed for adopting a little Chinese girl. And they have called round best friend Mark (John Schwab) to tell him they don’t want to see him again. He arrives with Deyn’s lissom blonde Paula and stays for dinner and a threesome.
There’s a certain amount of drunken friskiness, most of it offstage, around the swimming pool, in the bedroom (Peter is excluded from some explicit moaning on the intercom) and some nasty revelations about baby-shaking while baby-sitting on both sides; Mark’s ex-wife, whom we don’t see, and who’s had a nose job, was culpable, too.
It’s like a decadent, very funny, collaboration between Edward Albee and Yasmina Reza, with some witty linking classical musical played on steel drums and xylophone.
In a pathetic coda, Stoppard – who proves himself a surprisingly adept farceur in a performance of well-controlled attack – abases himself before Deyn’s cool, gazelle-like siren.
But the conclusion is not entirely unsavoury, and redemption not impossible. Melanie Gray is marvellous as a woman spoilt for options in her private life – we never know what these people actually do for a living; “we don’t drink, we have a child” – but hanging by a thread to her innate sense of decency.
Yes, these are terrible people, who shouldn't have a baby, and spend all their time thinking about sex, and being bad friends, and bad partners, but it's an entertaining evening anyway. Upstairs Downstairs' Ed Stoppard does a creditable American accent, Agyness Deyn makes lasers with her eyes, and John Schwab is the most convincing morally vapid sexually voracious hedonist I've seen in a while, but who IS this Melanie Gray? Where did she come from, and why haven't I heard of her? Her descent into drinking is perfect, her scorn for her husband and life in general searing, her speech about "having everything [she] ever wanted" sardonically scalding, and her comic timing perfect! She nails every laugh without laughing. When she laughed in the encore, I was surprised because she convinced me, that like her lost soul character, Mary, she couldn't laugh. One to watch. - steveatplays
21 Mar 12
On my last visit to Trafalgar Studio 2 a chap in the audience looked ready to kill the cast of Sex With a Stranger, such was his frustration with the characters. I hope he avoids this because he would probably spontaneously combust. Francois Archambault claims to be seeking to provoke the audience and he has certainly achieved that but I have no idea what other points he is trying to make with this story of two deeply tiresome yuppies, their friend and his "special" friend. A couple who seemingly have it all but are consumed by boredom is hardly original but cruelty towards their baby is treated nonchanantly, as if it was almost justifiable. There is also a threesome (off stage) which reminded me of the adolescent puerility of Wanderlust. Ed Stoppard bellows his way through a performance which is totalyy unsuited to this small space but Melanie Gray does the best she can with the morally reprehensible Mary and Agyness Deyn manages not to bump into the furniture on her stage debut. The Leisure Society gained terrific reviews from the Canadian press which makes you wonder about the state of theatre in Montreal. - David Baxter
Opened 29 Sep 1930, on site of the Old Ship Tavern. Famous for the Whitehall Farces (Brian Rix) which started in 1950. 608 seats. Member of the Society of London Theatre. An [ATG] member. Closed after the run of Abigail's Party July 12th 2003. The 377 seat Trafalgar Studio opens early 2004. A further 100 seat studio space in the pipeline. Renamed from the Whitehall to Trafalgar Studios.
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