Theatre
Royal, Glasgow
Four
stars
When
boys and girls come out to play in Yasmina Reza’s lacerating comedy of (bad)
manners, you just know someone is going to get hurt. It’s not the actual
children who cause the damage in Reza’s play, relocated to bourgeois des-res
London in Christopher Hampton’s deft translation, first seen in 2008. Rather,
it’s the two sets of increasingly desperate mums and dads who convene in an
attempt at conflict resolution after their respective 11-year-old sons have
what they probably wouldn’t call a square-go when one wouldn’t let the other
join his gang.
Boys
will be boys and all, but as Lindsay Posner’s touring revival, originating from
the Theatre Royal, Bath, lays bare, it’s pretty easy to blame the parents when
they’re as ghastly as the quartet presented here. Elizabeth McGovern’s Veronica
is initially charm itself as she and Nigel Lindsay’s rough diamond Michael hold
court with Alan and Annette, whose little darling seemingly did the damage.
Lawyer
Alan’s spectacular self-importance manifests itself in a series of mobile phone
calls, which, as disseminated through Simon Paisley Day’s portrayal of a
sneering Alan, become a kind of commentary on the unadulterated dishonesty on
public and private discourse. Samantha Spiro’s Annette, meanwhile, lives on her
nerves enough to break the ice of social politesse in explosive fashion.
As the
rum-fuelled stakes are raised ever higher on Peter McIntosh’s exquisitely
tasteful set, what emerges out of four fine performances is a well-tuned
portrait of domestic grotesquery that is a near neighbour to both Mike Leigh’s
Abigail’s Party and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? These are both
plays, like Reza’s, driven in different ways by children. Here, however, the
sparring is given a sheen of lightness, so any manic tendencies give way to the
ennui of intellectual incomprehension at their lot. In the end, the sheer
everyday awfulness of human behaviour can be glimpsed through the cracked veneer
of civilisation to expose the inherent ugliness within.
The Herald, January 29th 2020
ends
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