Surviving son Nicholas (Billy Howle) seems to wander rather obliviously through life, and one of the play's major plotlines sees him unaware - or wilfully ignorant - of the fact that his mother's hired companion Fenny (Bessie Carter) has been in love with him for the last ten years.
His late brother's widow Edna (Pandora Colin) decides to finally tip him off to the fact, ostensibly so he won't lead her on, but in practice she does have a history of sticking her oar in any time it looks like Nicholas might have a romantic interest. Elsewhere Cynthia is trying to avoid her mother's attempts to find out what she's been hiding in Paris, as well as dealing with the fact that her late twin sister's daughter is looking at her as a replacement mother. And Margery's marriage to Kenneth (Dharmesh Patel) is supposedly held together by her allowing him to flirt freely, a theory that's tested when he actually takes her up on it.
Frankie Bradshaw provides the latest Lyttelton set to create a grand old maze of a house by slotting together elements revolved and flown in, but although scenes also take place in the drawing room and dining room, nearly half the play is set in the nursery where the characters regularly retreat - in part to escape Dora's relentless ability to find busywork for everyone, but largely as a return to a place of comfort and safety. It fits into the play's themes of nostalgia and ageing: The middle-aged characters are very aware of time passing but the ones in their seventies feel like they're in the prime of their lives.
It's in different approaches to the latter that we get some of the best comic one-liners, as Dora is reunited for the first time in decades with her sister-in-law, who was also in love with Charles but had to settle for his brother. Belle (Kate Fahy) is full of back-handed compliments about Dora accepting old age gracefully, while Dora isn't averse to the odd dig at Belle's youthful looks: "She struggled going up the stairs. You can get your face lifted, but you’ve got to lift your feet yourself."
Dear Octopus premiered in 1938, and in a scene that’s presumably Burns’ addition we hear an extended radio news bulletin about bomb shelters and evacuation plans against a possible German attack on British soil. With the story still overshadowed by the losses of the First World War, you can see why a connection to the upcoming Second might make sense, but it’s not referenced anywhere else in the story so it feels like a non-sequitur. If anything it highlights the way there’s neither a huge amount of plot, nor any wider themes to the play than a fond tribute to families with all their complications and personal histories.
My only problem with this is the length, which to me dates it as much as Dora treating her staff like property that can be lent to her grandson Hugh (Tom Glenister) like a cup of sugar: This gentle mix of melancholy and humour works, and I can’t say there were many individual elements of Burns’ understatedly-acted production I didn’t like. But we’re in a world where the big climax is a proposal that’s been visible from space since Act I, and at three hours I couldn’t help wishing for something a bit meatier.
Dear Octopus by Dodie Smith is booking until the 27th of March at the National Theatre’s Lyttelton.
Running time: 2 hours 55 minutes including interval.
Photo credit: Marc Brenner.
No comments:
Post a Comment