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Theatre listings >
Present Laughter -
Tour.
Playwright - Noel Coward.
Director - Dominic Dromgoole.
Designer - Michael Taylor.
Lighting Designer - Natasha Chivers.
Sound Designer - Gregory Clarke.
Company - Theatre Royal Bath Productions.
Cast - here
Venue - King's Theatre Glasgow
www.kings-glasgow.co.uk 0141
240 1111 297 Bath St.
Dates - 24
Feb - 1 March at 7:30pm also Wed & Sat Mat at 2:30pm.
Tour Dates and Times - here.
Seen to review at King's Theatre Glasgow.
Run Time - 2hours 25 mins including two intervals.
Reviewer - Thelma Good.
Laughter is nearly always present.
Present Laughter - Theare Royal Bath Productions.
Rik Mayall as Garry Essendine.
© photographer 2003.
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Names can cynically be used to sell a show but combining Noel Coward's Present
Laughter and Rik Mayall, as its successful and ghastly charmer Garry Essendine,
pays off. To pull off a farce you need some big performances or he who hesitates
loses us to an uncomfortable silence. In this production laughter is nearly
always present despite a great deal happening on stage or occasional lines
flying past too fast.
Playwright Garry Essendine's off to Darkest Africa. Before he goes he
finds his life in theatrical London is catching up with him. The latest
young thing is in his spare room, his secretary Monica fails to stem the
callers, while his valet Fred tries to keep the household together despite
the batty foreign cook. It's all go in his studio flat where works of
art and Japanese kimonos are displayed in upmarket bohemian fashion.
Daphne the ingénue, a young aspiring writer Roland Maule, and Joanna,
wife of his producer and oldest friend Henry, are drawn by his heady and
successful charm. And it doesn't stop there. His other producer Maurice,
and his separated wife get swung into the increasingly sexually excited
mix as the day for Garry's departure approaches. Even the cook has her
moment, only Fred and Monica keeps their heads and dignity.
And it's all go on stage. Along side Rik Mayall's way-up-and-out-there
performance are two others to fuel the mix - William Mannering's
increasingly agitated Roland Maule and Gerrard McArthur's Morris
Dixon a lover confused in the agony of not quite know which way to head.
The women, less writ large, deliver more subtle, knowing shafts. Contrastingly
the men, even Essendine, are half surprised at where they find themselves.
Some Coward revivals, with actors' cut-glass diction mistakenly trying
to sound like the master himself, fail to vibrate with his energy. There's
no such problem here. Dominic Dromgoole's direction isn't pandering to
Mayall's way up and out there style - it's what the part, the play and
farce needs. Before the first act is over, Essendine is a monster - a
man too large in his own life.
Present Laughter, with its doors behind which women and men are secreted,
is structured so that each act and scene builds upon the last. The third
act's spiralling chaos pulls all the secrets out of the cupboards. Dominic
Dromgoole's production exhilarates as it rockets us up packed tight with
well layered direction.
© Thelma Good 24 February 2003. - Published on EdinburghGuide.com
Cast:
Garry Essendine - Rik Mayall, Liz Essendine - Caroline Harker, Morris
Dixon - Gerrard McArthur, Henry Lippiatt - John Dougall, Joanna Lippiatt
- Kim Thomson, Monica Reed - Pooky Quesnel, Fred - John Dougall, Miss
Erikson - Joanna Howarth, Daphne Sillington - Sally Bretton, Lady Saltburn
- Susan Porrett and Roland Maule - William Mannering.
Theatre Royal Bath Productions' tour of
Private Lives.
Tour continues after Glasgow to.
Week commencing.
3 March Richmond Theatre 020 8940 0088.
10 March Yvonne Arnaud Theatre Guildford 01483 440000.
17 March - Holiday.
24 March - Theatre Royal Bath 01225 448844.
Tour ends.
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