The Rivals, Richmond Theatre, September 2010

How do you play a character who has given her name to a word in the Oxford dictionary? Sincerely rather than as a caricature is what Penelope Keith gave us in her elegantly intelligent and sharply drawn portrayal of Mrs. Malaprop. It was a glowing performance, very well supported by Peter Bowles as an irascibly charming Sir Anthony Absolute, with Tam Williams smugly confident as his son Jack. The pretty and persistently wayward Lydia — Mrs. Malaprop’s niece — was beautifully portrayed by Robyn Addison, making her professional debut. What a delightful performance, and her cousin Julia, and Julia’s beloved Faulkland, were very well performed by Annabel Scholey and Tony Gardner.

Peter Bowles as Sir Anthony and Penelope Keith as Mrs Malaprop

The production by Peter Hall, from the Theatre Royal Bath, is wonderful fun, with excellent comic timing from Keiron Self as Bob Acres, and Gerard Murphy as a delightfully absurd Sir Lucius O’Trigger, looking just like a character from Alice in Wonderland. This period piece by Sheridan, with its stylised sense of humour, is a welcome relief from some of the politically correct theatre of today, and came over without the slightest feeling of contrivance. For an enjoyable evening of theatre it’s hard to beat.

After Richmond the production tours to: Theatre Royal Norwich Sept 17–Oct 2; Cambridge Arts Theatre Oct 4–9; Theatre Royal Nottingham Oct 12–16; Festival Theatre Malvern Oct 25–30; Festival Theatre Chichester Nov 1–6; with an as yet unconfirmed transfer to the West End.

Quartet, Richmond Theatre, July 2010

What is the point of life? For a performer who can no longer perform — in this case an opera singer who can no longer sing — the lights have already gone out. “I’m not the same person any more,” says Susannah York as she joins three other ex-opera singers at a rest home for have-been musicians, suddenly upsetting the balance of equanimity among them. One of the other three, Michael Jayston, was married to her once, before she moved on to three or four other husbands and had two children. “How long were you married?” Timothy West asks Michael Jayston. It seems an innocuous question, but every time it’s asked something happens and the answer never comes. Jayston is clearly appalled and upset by Susannah York’s sudden appearance, and she tries rather ineffectively to apologise for what she did all those years ago.

Susannah York, photo by Paul Toeman

But the three friends, West, Jayston and a charmingly batty Gwen Taylor have been asked to put on a performance to celebrate Verdi’s birthday in October. With York’s arrival it’s clear she should be included and they should do the quartet in Rigoletto with York as Gilda. She hasn’t sung it for years — in fact she retired early — and won’t cooperate. No way will she perform . . . but Jayston thinks he can persuade her, and after some off-stage antics the costumes arrive and she seems to have agreed. Who will be the accompanist to take them through their paces? No one knows, but they seem supremely confident, and say they are bringing in someone from outside. Costumes on, they look terrific, and amid ribald comments from their audience they prepare to start. I won’t let you into the secret, but in the second part of this play by Ronald Harwood you get to see what the point of life really is — it’s life itself.

Joe Harmston directed this fine production, in which Timothy West is wonderful as the Rabelaisian ex-baritone, perpetually full of wisdom and crudely flirtatious intent towards Gwen Taylor. She in turn is excellent as the motherly, helpful and slightly batty ex-contralto, while Michael Jayston is convincing as the cautious, reliably careful ex-tenor who pays his own way in the home. And then Susannah York is the difficult, insecure ex-soprano, still elegant and proud of her past glories. It’s difficult to admit to failures, but in her chatter with Gwen Taylor we find out what went wrong with her first marriage. Perhaps that admission of failure finally allows her to embrace her situation, live life as it now presents itself, and in the final quartet she performed as if she knew the part backwards — maybe she does.

Quartet plays at Richmond Theatre (12–17 July); Theatre Royal Nottingham (19–24 July); Milton Keynes Theatre (26–31 July); Theatre Royal Norwich (9–14 August); Oxford Playhouse (16–21 August); and Malvern Festival Theatre (23–28 August). The dates and theatre for a planned London season have yet to be announced.

The Browning Version, Rose Theatre, Kingston-on-Thames, September 2009

This production by Peter Hall of Terence Rattigan’s play about a classics master at boarding school, was beautifully performed. Peter Bowles was utterly convincing as the dried-out classics master, Crocker-Harris, who has recently suffered a heart attack and is now resigning from the school to take up a less stressful position at a crammer. Charles Edwards was superb as the engagingly human science master, Frank Hunter, and his rather cold affair with Crocker-Harris’s wife, played by Candida Gubbins, was well-portrayed. James Laurenson was good as the non-entity of a headmaster, and James Musgrave was wonderful as Taplow, the pupil who is keen to get his promotion to the ‘remove’, and presents Crocker-Harris with the Browning version of Agamemnon by Aeschylus. The playful mockery of the boys is as nothing compared to the calculated cruelty of Crocker-Harris’s wife, who relates to her husband details of her affairs with the other masters, nor to the cold denial by the trustees of a pension to poor Crocker-Harris, who has served only eighteen years instead of the necessary twenty. Terence Rattigan, and of course Peter Bowles, engage our sympathy for this disappointed scholar who was once a star at Oxford and is now teaching his pupils to read Aeschylus, surely the hardest of the Greek playwrights to understand. What is it that turns bright young people into unloved experts who inspire little more than fear from 99% of their underlings. Whatever it is, Rattigan portrays the result with understanding and regret. An excellent play.