Having missed out on War Horse (didn’t fancy it even after the rave reviews) we thought the subject matter of this one might interest us more and is very much up Neil Bartlett’s street.
This interview with Neil Bartlett explains his side of it:
To some extent it worked; the story across the decades was engaging. But the puppets didn’t really work for us. While we can recognise the incredible skill involved, it seemed, to us, to detract from the drama.
I’ve never been a huge fan of Rattigan and I recall that this play/production didn’t really change my view.
On the Sunday, somewhat on a whim I seem to recall, the Mainelli’s invited us over to their place as they had several people already scheduled to visit and they wanted a butchers at my new motor.
My abiding memory of that visit was how cold it was that day, but the assembled throng (especially Rupert Stubbs) insisted that we remove the roof of the car and drive off demonstrating the open-toppedness of the thing.
Dall-e thinks we looked a bit like this
When we got home, while we were eating a camembert salad supper, Janie’s twin sister Philippa called to let us know the bad news that she had been diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer. That news dampened our mood considerably and turned our world upside down for quite a while.
What a cast: Maggie Steed, Trevor Baxter, Caroline Quentin, Peter Wingfield, Stefan Bednarczyk, Marcello Magni. Joint directors Mike Alfreds and Neil Bartlett.
No wonder I was keen to see it.
Still, I don’t think Janie and I were wild about this one. I was fast learning that Janie doesn’t like classics as much as she likes modern pieces, nor does she like farce. Marivaux was never likely to float Janie’s boat.
Yet worse, from a “what Janie does and doesn’t like” point of view, this production had re-located the piece in the 1930’s, adding a Cowardesque flavour to it that didn’t go down well with the reviews that are currently ( as I write in 2019) on-line/clippable.
Despite that, the sheer weight of talent on show carried the day for us, as we both found the production entertaining and could not question its quality of production.
Below is Michael Billington’s review from the Guardian:
