Dreams of Violence *** TNT
It’s all getting too much for near-menopausal Hildy. She’s chucked her philandering husband out of the house – but her once-famous and now alcoholic mother has moved in. Her father’s in a care home (too frail and confused to look after himself, but still more than capable of intentionally annoying the staff) and her drug addict son has gone awol but is somehow managing to extract money from the rest of the relatives.
In the middle of all this family disruption, she’s busy campaigning for workers’ rights and a decent wage for low-paid city cleaners. No wonder her dreams are full of violent acts of retribution for the upsets she’s suffered during the day.
In Max Stafford-Clark’s competent rather than inspired production for Out of Joint, Stella Feehily’s new play is often funny and paints an all too credible picture of the competing demands made on women of a certain age, but it’s too formulaic to maximise its impact. The cleaners are cartoonish characters and her former pop star mum (an impossibly young looking Paula Wilcox) is required to pad out the proceedings with renditions of her old hits.
That said, Nigel Cooke is effective as her ex (a successful surgeon offering great sex, reconciliation and a load more lies) whilst Ciaran McIntyre is touching as well as infuriating as her Irish dad. And at the centre of it all is Catherine Russell’s fading, frazzled Hildy, holding on to her political beliefs but physically and emotionally unravelling as the competing strains start to tell.
No comments:
Post a Comment