It’s thrilling when a skilful piece of theatrical archaeology rescues a previously moribund drama and reveals it in glittering new light. This is what Michael Grandage’s legendary Donmar production of 2008 did for Enid Bagnold’s previously moribund 1955 drawing room drama, but a decade on the magic sadly isn’t repeated. Like Mrs St Maugham’s problematic garden, the soil of Alan Strachan’s revival is not given to abundant flowering.
Penelope Keith, as the doughty matriarch presiding over three female generations, can deliver an imperious one-liner with the best of them, but what’s missing all round are the delicate emotional undercurrents so vital to prevent the piece tipping over into hollow melodrama. She employs the elusive Miss Madrigal (Amanda Root) as companion to her solipsistic, arson-inclined teenage granddaughter Laurel (Emma Curtis) and when a judge (Oliver Ford Davies, nicely crumpled) comes to lunch, past misdemeanours come home to roost.
Simon Higlett’s expansively musty living room-cum-conservatory set creates an ideal ambience of genteel decay for a distinctly pre-war household living in changed times.
Root’s air of mystery errs too often on the side of blankness and Curtis is predominantly exasperating; we should want to unearth much more of the hurt that lies beneath. Grandage’s ghosts – Margaret Tyzack, Penelope Wilton, Felicity Jones, three of the finest performances I have ever seen in one play – hover tantalisingly at the edges.
The best theatre to see in June
Until June 16
