Perth Theatre
3 stars
This weekend’s screening of ‘comedy-drama’ The Dinner Party starred the brilliant Alison Steadman, who, thirty years earlier, became iconic by recreating her stage role as grotesque suburban hostess Beverly in the far funnier Mike Leigh devised Play For Today. The Dinner Party’s slack homage not only points up today’s televisual redundancy, but, as London Classic Theatre’s revival of its inspiration makes clear, accentuates the brilliance of the original which hindsight brings to it.
For this reason Michael Cabot’s production can’t help but appear done by rote, even if onstage Bev and co’s G and T-fuelled bad behaviour is far darker than the extended sit-com of its TV version. Paula Jennings blazes with bravura as the desperately aspirational Beverly, a living template for nouveau-riche proto-Thatcherites to come. Desperately unsatisfied by her marriage to estate agent Laurence, her dry-humping of Benjamin Warren’s mono-syllabic neighbour Tony is as inappropriate as when she jubilantly pops a bottle of Beaujolais in the fridge.
All that des-res naffness, from Jose Feliciano and James Galway on the stereo to ‘erotic’ prints on the bedroom wall, are ickily uncomfortable pointers to a generation for whom watching Changing Rooms before going down to Ikea is the ultimate foreplay to a Morcheeba soundtracked soiree as a respite from a job in IT or PR.
At the time, though, material girl Bev appeared to represent a generation who’d become their parents too soon and were now scrambling their way out of their own conformist mundanity. If only they could gate-crash the far-more-fun sounding teenage shindig next door held by the absent Abigail (a punk curiously playing disco records), they’d show them how to get down. Aging ravers take note.
The Herald, September 10th 2007
ends
3 stars
This weekend’s screening of ‘comedy-drama’ The Dinner Party starred the brilliant Alison Steadman, who, thirty years earlier, became iconic by recreating her stage role as grotesque suburban hostess Beverly in the far funnier Mike Leigh devised Play For Today. The Dinner Party’s slack homage not only points up today’s televisual redundancy, but, as London Classic Theatre’s revival of its inspiration makes clear, accentuates the brilliance of the original which hindsight brings to it.
For this reason Michael Cabot’s production can’t help but appear done by rote, even if onstage Bev and co’s G and T-fuelled bad behaviour is far darker than the extended sit-com of its TV version. Paula Jennings blazes with bravura as the desperately aspirational Beverly, a living template for nouveau-riche proto-Thatcherites to come. Desperately unsatisfied by her marriage to estate agent Laurence, her dry-humping of Benjamin Warren’s mono-syllabic neighbour Tony is as inappropriate as when she jubilantly pops a bottle of Beaujolais in the fridge.
All that des-res naffness, from Jose Feliciano and James Galway on the stereo to ‘erotic’ prints on the bedroom wall, are ickily uncomfortable pointers to a generation for whom watching Changing Rooms before going down to Ikea is the ultimate foreplay to a Morcheeba soundtracked soiree as a respite from a job in IT or PR.
At the time, though, material girl Bev appeared to represent a generation who’d become their parents too soon and were now scrambling their way out of their own conformist mundanity. If only they could gate-crash the far-more-fun sounding teenage shindig next door held by the absent Abigail (a punk curiously playing disco records), they’d show them how to get down. Aging ravers take note.
The Herald, September 10th 2007
ends
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