| Mother fixations a plenty |
| New writing at the Torch Theatre |
At the Torch |
| Torch Theatre- ‘Conversation With A Cupboard Man’ and ‘Oh Hello’ , Torch Theatre, Milford Haven , August 9, 2001 |
| Two new plays, monologues from self-deluded damaged men: what they share is an obsession with their mother. Charles Hawtrey, as depicted by Dave Ainsworth in ‘Oh Hello’ (Hawtrey’s catchphrase) is another of those ‘Carry On’ stars whose life is seen to be somewhat less glamorous and happy than his chirpy persona might lead us to expect. But having had Terry Johnson’s ‘Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle & Dick’, Kenneth Williams’ diaries, Barbara Windsor’s confessions and the rest, that whole world has now been systematically and successfully demystified. That Charles Hawtrey, the third man of the Carry Ons after Sid James and Kenneth Williams, was a pathetic, lonely alcoholic queen really comes as no great surprise. Ainsworth was a stand up comic who now teaches in Pembroke and ‘Oh Hello’, developed with director Peter Doran, is an often moving but always pathetic tale of a mediocre performer who, after a promising start as a child actor and appearance in Will Hay and under Alfred Hitchcock, was pigeonholed into the same roles. In his private life he was demeaned and humiliated by the likes of the ‘Carry On’ producers and the bitchy Williams and Ainsworth gives us a brief biography that is compassionate and engaging. It needs more work yet and suffers from our over familiarity with the scene and from the lack of a central theme, but there is certainly potential. The other play of this enterprising double-bill of new writing at The Torch, ‘Conversation With A Cupboard Man’, gave us another victim of mother-fixation but one whose tragedy, and the telling of it, is somewhat more harrowing. Craig Rogan – one of Peter Doran’s ‘finds’ at The Torch (the actor had been a student of Doran’s at the Welsh College of Music & Drama), plays a severely mentally ill young man who can scarcely tell us his story of humiliation and torture, his words tumbling out in a mixture of frustration and passion, his fingers nervously flicking and jabbing. Based on an Ian McEwan short story, Rogan and Doran’s script is a snapshot of someone forever trapped, shut in, whether in the horrifying reality of his imprisonment in an industrial kitchen oven or in the more metaphorical desire to return to the womb. The deeply affecting tale is made the more painful by his inarticulacy and Rogan’s performance is an amazing sixty minutes of intense realism. If you remember this talented actor from his comic roles at The Torch or with Wales Actors Company (he shone in their ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ last year), you will be delighted to know he can tackle the other end of the spectrum – in fact the danger with this production is that the performance is so strong, so hypnotic, so concentrated, that it can seem just that: a performance, a dramatic tour de force where we are so mesmerised that we become disengaged from the content of the play. ‘Conversation With A Cupboard Man’ is next playing at the Edinburgh Festival (Venue 13, 19-25 August), where the more intimate surroundings of Venue 13 should make it even more intense and closer contact between actor and audience should make it a profoundly affecting theatrical experience. Then it deserves to come back to Wales, where it was made. |
Reviewed by: David Adams |
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