Perth Theatre
4 stars
The irresistible rise of budget airlines has made international travel
accessible across the social scale. This wasn't the case when John
Godber's brittle study of a middle-aged working class couple's
broadening horizons first appeared in 1992, when the world seemed a lot
bigger to Bet and Al and the generation they represent.
Their sense of claustrophobia is accentuated even more in Kenny
Miller's striking new co-production between Perth and the Tron in
Glasgow by stylising their living room as a white cube which more
resembles a prison cell or a hospital ward than a home. With the pair
either perched on chairs or else prowling the room looking for an
escape route, Bet and Al's mono-syllabic exchanges point up the
domestic torpor of what their relationship has become.
Emasculated since being made redundant, Al seeks solace by painting
lifeless pictures in the garden shed, while Bet buries herself in
magazine competitions, trying to win herself a life, a prize which
eventually comes through a trip to Paris. As the play follows their
journey, from cruise ship to Paris itself, Bet and Al's emotional
impasse cools, and a series of little epiphanies open out their
world-view to something more panoramic.
Despite Godber's tendency for mawkishness, the clipped mundanity of Bet
and Al's barbs more resemble 1970s German minimalist writers. Miller's
production plays with this quality by investing it with an
impressionistic sense of style that largely avoids sentimentalism. As
Bet and Al, Emma Gregory and Andrew Westfield capture all the
fish-out-of-water social awkwardness of a class with low expectations
and even lower aspirations, but whose lives have just been changed
forever.
The Herald, March 19th 2013
ends
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