There is nothing more interesting than delving deep into a person’s mind and seeing what makes them tick. Put this within a literary or dramatic perspective and you have the ideal platform for close character development and analysis.
Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads!, produced by the Manoel Theatre Company, ran last weekend at the Manoel Theatre and was one of the best examples of this type of in-depth characterisation. Mr Bennett’s mastery of the well-wrought play was more than evident in the four monologues offered by four excellent actresses, one of whom, Polly March, also directed.
Working with the clever, witty and darkly incisive scripting so typical of Mr Bennett, is no easy task ordinarily, but couple this with the fact that each one of the four stand-alone pieces required a single actress reacting to the slightest nuance of language and manoeuvring her way around each simple and effective set, in a semblance of normality, showed great insight both in terms of acting and direction.
Although I found it rather surprising that the Manoel Theatre Company chose a script so culturally rooted in Britishness to present as part of their line-up – and it was a risky choice because so much could have gone wrong if left in inexpert hands or dealt with by a cast which was not fully sensitive to the cultural setting and attitude of the pieces – I’m very glad to say that it worked extremely well.
This was in no small part due to the fact that the actresses themselves have the requisite socio-cultural background to carry the weight of their performances. Their command of the English language in terms of tone, inflection and accent helped round out the credibility of their characters.
Sue Scantlebury played Susan in Bed Among Lentils, a vicar’s wife who is not at all enamoured of her husband’s position and the reflected limelight it throws upon her, with all the expectations it sets up of what a vicar’s wife is meant to be.
Ms Scantlebury was suitably disillusioned as a woman whose lot in life doesn’t live up to her personal beliefs and put across the ennui felt by the sherry-drinking Susan very effectively.
Her life takes an interesting turn when she takes matters into her own hands and strikes up an interesting liaison with an Indian shopkeeper, Mr Ramesh, who is genuinely interested in her, unlike her husband, and passes little judgement while offering comfort.
The same cannot be said for the bitter Celia, played caustically to perfection by Isabel Ripard in The Hand of God, where a struggling curio-shop owner attempts to take matters into her hands, thinking that she was more than cunning enough to cope with them. After taking on the responsibility of looking after an old lady for the sole purpose of getting her hands on her possessions, Celia realises that the one thing she’d ignored was the one thing she should have held onto.
Holding on was not the major problem, as much as treading on was for Polly March’s excellent Miss Fozzard in the eponymous Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet. When her new chiropodist, Mr Dunderdale shows a penchant for being paid in a foot and shoe fetish, Miss Fozzard finds herself trudging, tramping, stomping, tiptoeing and all manner of other fancy footwork, which ultimately makes her life just that bit more interesting.
The one thing I’d have changed about the performance would have been to end the series with this piece rather than the melancholy and dark Nights In The Garden Of Spain, where a poised Isabella Attard played the middle-class Rosemary, whose perfect, suburban life hides a sad truth – the fact that husbands can be monstrous. Her friendship with her neighbour Fran, who murders her husband for forcing her to commit acts of sexual depravity, leads the two women to strike up a relationship based on their common love of gardening – which served as a pretty façade for the darker, thornier truth.
This terrific performance tugged at the heartstrings without being melodramatic or saccharine, confirming that all four leading ladies did an excellent job and kept their audience interested till the very end.
Mr Bennett’s twists and clearly sensitive dealing with these topics from the hilarious to the horrible, had an undisputedly insightful female perspective on life which was held strongly and solidly by the slick production, leading a surprisingly long performance to appear much shorter than it actually was, making it certainly a show worth watching and leaving me wanting more.