I’ll come straight to the point; this new touring production of a trio of Alan Bennett’s monologues isn’t really worth bothering with. The reasons why it isn’t worth seeing have little to do with the quality of the writing, the production or (most) of the performances. Instead, it represents a basic misunderstanding of the theatrical potential of a series of extremely intimate monologues, which originated (and achieved deserved acclaim) as half-hour BBC episodes. If this was to be staged in the intimate surroundings of a studio theatre, it might work. But in the unforgiving space of the proscenium arch, it’s dead in the water.
The choice of monologues probably isn’t the wisest, either. The audience, mainly of a certain age, bravely laughed along but the low-key humour and emphasis on loss and death makes the evening a long one. The first, ‘Lady of Letters’, is probably the most entertaining, revolving as it does around the busybody Miss Ruddock and her inveterate letter-writing habit. As it continues, we realise that she’s not a harmless eccentric, as we supposed her, but someone of near infinite malice who takes pleasure in causing upset and hurt. In the second, ‘A Chip In The Sugar’, we follow the mummy’s boy Graham, distraught that his beloved mother seems to be on the verge of taking up with an old flame. And in the last, ‘A Cream Cracker Under The Settee’, we spend half an hour or so with Doris, an elderly woman in poor health who reminisces about her late husband and a tragic loss in the past.
Most of the commercial appeal here lies in the casting of Stephanie Cole as Doris, a part originated by Thora Hird. As the only actress to have originally appeared in a Bennett monologue, Cole is appealingly plangent where Hird radiated frailty, but it’s unfortunate that her piece comes at the end of an evening that has been dragging for some time by then. (It’s not helped by the perverse decision to have two quarter-hour intervals in between monologues, presumably to maximise ice cream sales.) Karl Theobald is fine as Graham but somewhat hamstrung by the obvious arc of his character; the middle-aged gay man with mild mental health and less mild mother issues has so long been a staple of this sort of middlebrow drama that it barely registers. And Siobhan Redmond, normally an excellent actress, can’t master the Yorkshire accent that the part requires, her half-Scots intonation making Miss Ruddock much more of a flamboyant grotesque than she ought to be.
It gives me little pleasure to castigate this Theatre Royal Bath production, capably if uninspiringly directed by Sarah Esdaile, the former Associate Director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse. Bennett’s writing is frequently sharp, often moving and barbed, even if it now feels like a cosy period piece at a remove of three decades from when they were originally written. But what it doesn’t make for is a particularly necessary evening at the theatre.
Talking Heads at Theatre Royal Brighton until 31st August 2015. For more information and tickets visit the website.
