Last week The Lyttleton served us two courses of Alan Bennett and the starter was
tastier than the main course. Cocktail
Sticks, containing material from his memoirs A Life Like Other People’s, is
an absolute delight from start to finish.
Alex Jennings plays Alan Bennett ......... correction
........ is Alan Bennett, such is his total mastery of immersing himself into
our wonderful Yorkshire writer. He captures not only Bennett's flat delivery,
but also his particular detachment, flashes of dry wit and manages to look just
like him. He is Bennett on the
Lyttleton stage regretting a childhood where nothing happened and feeling
guilty about constantly being embarrassed by his Mam and Dad.
His ever
curious and socially ambitious Mam, whose later life was dogged by
mental-illness is superbly brought to life by Gabriel Lloyd. We cringe at her worst faux pas, laugh at her
amusing ones and cry at her sadness. Dad excellently portrayed by Jeff Rawle, is happier in his skin.
No social climber him. Just a gentle man come to terms with his
son's sexuality, proud of his adult success and very much in love with his
wife, despite the fact that his whole married life was spent holding her
handbag slightly away from himself (as if it were something unsavory) whilst
she paid a visit to the ladies (dirty places toilet floors). There is no
doubting Bennett's parents love for their son, nor his love for them. The
overriding emotion here is guilt. Bennett's guilt at being so slow to
realise that anything can potentially be the stuff of literature and allowing
himself to be embarrassed by his parents' social inadequacies.
What helps to
make this play so affecting, apart from the writing and Nicholas Hytner's superb direction is Jennings' ability to suggest
profound changes with just the smallest adjustments - sitting motionless next
to his ailing mother, playing his 10 year old self with the slightest drop of
the shoulder and voice. The play lasts just over an hour and I wanted it
to go on and on, such was its ability to evoke every emotion. At times
Bennett's guilt was indistinguishable from my own.
People, the main course is not quite so satisfactory, despite excellent
direction from Nicholas Hytner.
In it Bennett takes a mighty funny but almighty swipe at The National
Trust. Although it isn't one of his best in terms of emotional depth it
does have many amusing and touching moments thanks, in no small measure, to Frances de la Tour's haughtily
aristocratic but impoverished Dorothy Stacpoole and Linda Bassett’s long suffering and slyly subversive
companion, Iris. They are both brilliant.
The two elderly
spinsters live in the Stacpoole's rapidly decaying stately home near Sheffield,
spending their days reminiscing about the past whilst sitting huddled around a
lonely electric fire. Dorothy dreams of soaking in a bath in a warm bathroom,
whilst Iris remembers war time Canadian Troops. Lynette Munro, the Costume
Designer, is to be congratulated for introducing these two elderly
stalwarts dressed respectively in a moth-eaten fur coat, muffler and welly
boots and extremely scruffy ancient tweed suit. It sets the scene perfectly,
especially when we realise Dorothy was once a society model who obviously wore
the same coat in rather more salubrious surroundings. Every now and then
they break into Petula Clark’s Downtown and dance around the room.
Obviously very much in tune with one another over their desire not to
hand the decaying pile over to The Natioanal Trust. Unlike Dorothy's
younger sister, June, the splendid Selina
Cadell, who as a very bossy, lesbian archdeacon wants to do just that.
Their relationship with her is as arctic as the old house itself.
Dorothy can't think of anything worse than hordes of people traipsing
around her childhood home and will contemplate almost anything to prevent it,
even considering its purchase by a dodgy sounding conglomerate entitled the
Concern. A camel coated twittish
auctioneer played by Miles Jupp is a
spokesperson for this shadowy organization whose ethos is that people spoil
things. Here, here agrees Dorothy,
although she’s less than pleased with his suggestion that the house be moved to
a somewhat nicer location somewhere in the West Country.
Act Two sees
Dorothy getting her wish for a warm bath when a blast from her not altogether
innocent past appears in the shape of Peter Egan's porn film director.
His film crew, not only turn part of the hall into the set of “Reach for
the Thigh”, but also get the radiators working once more. Life for the two old partners in crime has
suddenly become fun again, especially when the filming is disturbed by a myopic
bishop who is persuaded it isn't porn they're making but a Women's Institute
advent calendar.
The National
Trust is represented by an amusing but slightly over the top Nicholas le Prevost. His
enthusiasm over the discovery that the stately pile houses chamber pots left
unemptied after their use by previous guests including Kipling, Elgar and Shaw,
threatens to spiral out of control.
Bob Crowley's set is a masterpiece, especially when the crumbling
house is transformed at the end of the play. Our two heroines are
transformed, too, but not necessarily in the way they would like.
Even if you don’t
agree with Bennett’s obvious
jaundiced view of our dear old National Trust, or maybe the middle classes who
revere it, it’s great fun seeing his views aired on the Lyttleton stage
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