Review of All in the Timing
 | "Mountview talent negotiates uneven evening" by Dominic di Nezza for remotegoat on 22/08/09 |  |
Quite how you feel about this will depend on your convictions, but it's peppy. Oh man, it's peppy. The cast (sometimes quadrupling across six Ives plays) are full of gusto and endeavour, although it's fair to say that in the allocation of roles some get a better deal than others.
Truth be told, the opening third of the evening is probably the heaviest session to digest. English Made Simple, a dissection of a series of broadly relationship-based pleasantries, allows frustratingly fleeting glimpses of the whole cast at work. Only Joseph Glynn, as dissector, is constantly onstage, and he can't really alleviate the dramatic dryness that sets in about halfway through.
It doesn't help that Seven Menus, which follows the fortunes of a very fluid group of dining companions, attempts more or less the same thing in (fractionally) more depth. Of the shifting cast of eight, Zoë Land, Matt Palfrey and Jenna Verdicchio stand out, but we also become more aware of Ives' limitations as a character-builder - more on this later.
Words Words Words, Ives' take on the famous theory of monkeys, typewriters and Hamlet, is probably the highlight of the evening. Palfrey, Kat Redstone and Richard Booth are simply superb as the baffled, over-educated primates, with director Sean McLevy finally nailing the simple eloquent ridiculousness of the text to hilarious effect. It's an absolute blast and brilliantly showcases the talent of the trio onstage.
With Foreplay or The Art of the Fugue we return to what seems to be the unspoken theme of the evening - mini-golf. Or not. Yes, it's back to relationships again as we follow three sexually-charged dates around a miniature golf course. What seems at first to be a re-hash of Seven Menus is actually a looser and jollier affair, with Stanley Brown in particular savouring the libidinous loser Chuck. However, although Geraldine Barry Murphy, Stephanie Feeney and Nicole Hartley are an absolute hoot as three ditzy golfing buddies, they underline an unfortunate fact of the evening - Ives struggles with active female parts (no pun intended).
If anything, this is underlined by the touching final pieces, Sure Thing and Variations on the Death of Trotsky, in which a man attempts the moves on a woman in a restaurant and the Socialist pariah and his wife try to negotiate the awkward moments following his assassination. The potential lovebirds are given engaging life by Susan Barrett and Joseph Glynn, and Zoë Land and Richard Booth are first-rate as the poignant Trotskys, but in both cases we're aware that the females are the foils to the males.
It's a frustrating evening then, at times, but by no means an unwatchable one. McLevy's direction is inconsistent, struggling at times with the perceived 'meaningfulness' of Ives' wordier pieces, but for much of the broader comedies it is flawless. Mention should also go to designer Nigel Hook for the masterful arrangement of the promenade stage-space, and also Peter Bragg's lighting, which combined to elevate this showcase beyond a stuffy smoking-room revue.
| Event Venues & Times | |
| finished | New Players Theatre | Villiers Street, The Arches, London, WC2N 6NG |
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