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Stars explained: * A production of no real merit
with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not
enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real
life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A
good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely
achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a
great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major
flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic
which lifts theatre to another plane. |
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Danny played by Chris Gilbey-Smith and Cheryl Laverick as Laura. Pictures: Richard Smith Photography Beginning The Loft, Leamington **** Staging David Eldridge’s play Beginning is typically courageous of The Loft, not least in two respects. Firstly, the vibrant, top-class company has long had an enviable record of putting on contemporary works (a very large number of particularly well-chosen plays) without in any way diminishing its unceasing gift for unleashing fistfuls of traditional repertoire, from Shakespeare and Ben Jonson to Restoration Comedy, Chekhov, Gogol and Strindberg, Dylan Thomas and much more. This latest offering – directed by Viki Betts (Mosquitoes, The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, as well as a hugely experienced Stage Manager) is the first of David Eldridge’s 30-odd plays it has mounted, and most likely it won’t be the last. Eldridge’s achievements – some 30 plays, amazingly, have taken in not just the BBC but a host of London’s top theatres (Royal Court, Almeida, plus above all the National Theatre, both the Olivier and the Dorfman). Off West End and Guardian Theatre Critics’ Awards have festooned his way. He is a notably convincing adaptor, not just of the Scandinavians – Ibsen and Strindberg - but even of John Le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. In addition, Beginnings (first seen before Covid at the National Theatre’s Dorfman – formerly Cottesloe – theatre, and part of a trilogy) is what is known as a two-hander: rather like one of the more compact Pinter or Stoppard pieces, for focusing on an exceptionally small cast. Essentially the pair here – Danny (Chris Gilbey-Smith) and Laura (Cheryl Laverick) are engaged in what might be described as not having a relationship. His hang-up mainly concerns breaking away from a previous relationship, and family, which while totally understandable has become not just a tie but a fixation and obsession. Her preoccupation, which she forcibly hangs on to, is about preserving her independence (‘all my friends are jealous of my freedom, and living on my own.’
Only at the very end – rather hilariously – do we find this prickly pair both yielding (‘Sorry about my belly…think you could flick the heating on?’) and as the curtain falls, poised to leap rapturously and energetically into bed. Despite ample praise (‘an intimate look at the first fragile moments of risking your heart and taking a chance’; and ‘adds unusual poignancy to the dating game’), it would seem that the play’s intention is to show – by a host of ups and downs, intertwinings and rejections, mutual insult (usually amusing) and playing not to get a gradual, almost systematic and structured, even logical, process by which determined elusiveness is in fact all part of the coming together process. The play struck me as only partially successful in that respect. Rather too much seems to rest content more or less recycling the same, or very similar, material. The narrative establishes itself from the outset as the interplay between two characters who almost wilfully determine to escape each other: evasive, pert, annoying, irritable, unpredictable. What the play needs – cries out for – is variety. We were fortunate that Cheryl Laverick and Chris Gilbey-Smith had the resilience and flair to kick the somewhat variable quality script into life. They brought to it a multitude of banter, of resistance; of insistence and passivity; of neatly timed irony, and a wealth of cheeky sarcasm; of entertaining or teasing asides (‘I could kill for something to eat’ – Laura sets wittily to work ‘such a long time since I cooked for a man’) on a George Forman mini-grill; or apologies from the beginning for the state of her flat. This well-matched twosome achieved something that proved in some ways superior to the text. True, there were moments, even stretches, of banality, periods when you might feel an interruption of some kind, an invasion from outside or a few more explosive moments, might lend the unfolding material a little more fire. But this was a finessed duo, their rapid exchanges, mutual machine-gunning then collapsing into laughter whether tentative or full-blooded, the moments of unexpected common sense, little outbursts of genuine wisdom, of their tennis-ball or at least badminton-racquet patterings, and perhaps not least the moments of stillness and pause – perfectly judged and timed - reviving interest just when one feared it might be drooping. You never quite guessed what they might come up with next. You really wanted to know. And that, I guess, is what made this double-hander come off so successfully. The Beginning will come to an end on 04-10-25. Roderic Dunnett 09-25 |
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