Review of Many Roads To Paradise
| "Comic invention, wit and pathos.." by Aline Waites for remotegoat on 16/06/08 |  |
at the Finborough
Permutt's unique talent consists of the invention of troubled but very funny characters - the kind of roles that actors long for - and his gift for comedy dialogue and pathos has never been so well exploited as in this, the latest of his offerings.
This play concerns a company of six - three couples with each pair apparently unrelated to the others. Stella is an eighty year old blind woman in a Jewish old peoples' home, getting to know and love her carer, a muslin woman from Mogadishu. Sadia is kind, makes up her face for her and listens to the old ladies stories of her life as a single mother in the fifties, her disappointment with her grown up daughter and the fun she used to have working as a milliner and having tea parties with her friends.
Martin is a very respectable gay man, a travel agent who has taken to touring the internet looking for a partner. He meets up with Leo, a cockney sex enthusiast in jeans and leathers and they embark on a confused and confusing friendship.
Helen, overweight, unmade up and sloppily dressed, lives with her partner Avril, a retired radio producer who takes out her boredom and bitterness by drinking heavily and bullying her friend, nicknaming her "Scruffy" and making fun of her cooking..
Amanda Boxer has a most rewarding role as Avril, with her superbly timed acerbic dialogue that gets a laugh every time she speaks but shows that underneath there is a vulnerable and needy woman. Helen is superbly played by Gillian Hanna with no makeup and artfully lumpy costumes. She too has hidden talents and surprises. None of the people bear out the description of stereotype which might be levelled at them on their first appearance. Daniel Hill gives a carefully considered performance as the gay man, only betraying his sexual orientation by a certain softness of diction and tiny, ineffectual movements. Jason Wing, great casting as Leo, is a different person when he dons a tweed coat and answers to the name of George. Towering above them all is the wonderful Miriam Karlin who uses a whole range of emotions from ecstasy to anger to sadness to wistfulness as Stella, and she is always the central character, the spider in the centre of this complicated web. All the characters are involved with each other somehow, the only outsider being Elizabeth Uter whose tender performance as Sadia proclaims her a woman at peace with herself and with others.
The actors have been directed by Anthony Biggs who understands the piece very well and brings out every ounce of comedy while allowing the tragic nature of the various situations to express themselves. There is one set which has to suffice for all locations. Designed by Beck Rainford, it works well - a multipurpose set which never seems odd due to Tony Simpson's lighting effects which throw each scene and setting into relief,
Permutt has reason to be proud of this treatment of his work and the artists who have served him so well.
ALINE WAITES
| Event Venues & Times | |
| finished | Finborough Theatre | 118 Finborough Road, London, SW10 9ED |
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