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Conan Sweeny and Charlie De Bromhead as Charlie and Jake Stones in his pocket
Coventry Belgrade B2
**** Marie Jones’s
Stones in His Pockets
began modestly, introduced by a modest Irish ensemble as part of the
flourishing West Belfast Festival 20 years ago, then an unpretentious
local tour, with no suggestion of the tremendous hit it was to become
both in the West End and on Broadway. I must admit, I
couldn’t see clearly what gave it that inflated status as company after
company took it up and cooed about it, even in this thoroughly agreeable
touring version at the Belgrade, acted by an impish duo (Conan Sweeny
and Charlie De Bromhead, a nice pair of over-the-water likely lads). But
then I felt similarly about Art
- and looks at the success of that. Then I fell to thinking what Stones was famous for. The play has, suggests director John Terry, ‘A deep sense of the daft’. Well yes, that was very nicely caught. One of the pleasures and excitements is ‘To watch an actor (either of the two) leap from one character to the next.’ This is indeed one of the features, limited in Part I - where the chief bit of dexterity is watching know-it-all character Charlie doff his brogue and don the drawling persona of star American actress Caroline Giovanni. He’s clever, and arch, and the joke - the same character switch - repeated just possibly gets to weary. There’s a sudden flurry of character swaps at the
start of Part 2, and those really were entertaining, dazzling for an
moment in their deftness and the admirably pert, cheeky way in which
they effected each transition. De Bromhead’s Jake is (mostly) the calm-spoken,
tolerant one, catchy from the start as the Company Manager who tries to
keep performers and crew up to the minute and ready for their takes.
Sweeny’s Charlie is almost frenetically active, his excitable body
language and rubbery neck, his endless nervy hopping from one spot to
another, arrogant but entertaining, a sort of human jack-in-a-box, never
letting a comment go without adding his tuppenny-worth. This was enough to furnish endless entertainment,
and they certainly do. There were some - I presume - Irish jokes I
didn’t get, but which made half of the appreciative Coventry audience
chortle violently, and just to hear their burr and patter was a treat in
itself. Dialect Coach Jacquie Crago had done her stuff
with Charlie; perhaps a little less with Jake. Did director Terry
succeed in getting the range of characters needed to make this a
well-enough defined show? I’m not sure. Most of the time, we were left
to engage with Charlie and Jake, these two and their antics, with no
real pertinent, unmistakeable suggestion of the arrival, or evocation,
of a new character. A greater flamboyance in the shifts of accent, more
of an Olivier-like exaggeration in the introduction of a new part - all
the more so if the transition is brief - seemed to be called for. But one thing really
did catch my imagination. What this able pair, and Jones’s script,
seemed to give us was an updated
Waiting for Godot. Taken on those
terms, this twosome - with a hefty tranche of script each - really held
us with their bizarre outbursts, their private mutterings and
unpredictable changes of subject. One could love, cherish and admire
them for that alone. To 02-03-16 Roderic Dunnett 31-03-16
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