Review of At the Torch from the theatre dance and drama in Wales web site

At the Torch

Torch Theatre Company- Flowers from Tunisia , Clwyd Theatr Cymru Mold , June 9, 2011

Author Laurence Allan has summed up this play very well in his paraphrase of L.P.Hartley.
“Dementia is a foreign country, they do things differently there”.

Reah has no idea that her thoughts and memories are constantly shifting. Son Keith, struggling with his own post Gulf War demons, is all too aware of it. His approach is a straight-down-the-middle pragmatism approximating to “buck your ideas up Mam and it'll be just like it was before”. When neighbour Rose suggests a wildly impractical holiday in Tunisia, she, without meaning to, provides the best possible solution.

Because Reah has a long-suppressed secret and a meeting with Khalid, a Tunisian flower seller, enables her to slip back to a time when she was happy and once more take up a relationship from the past.

Not that the others have any idea where she is inside her head so Rose panics and puts in an emergency call to Keith who arrives, goes ballistic and starts reliving his own ignominious military past.

Flowers from Tunisia is at heart a gentle love story, albeit one that happened years before. It starts with some very funny, if slightly uncomfortable, comedy as Keith tries to come to terms with Reah's faulty memory.

After flirting with the comedy of cultural misunderstanding and the crass behaviour of the British abroad it arrives at some genuinely edgy threats of violence. The understandings of the ending come as a relief even if Keith's conversion doesn't wholly convince.

There are other faults too. I'm not sure that the updating to the present really works, I think it should have been kept as a period piece when Tunisia was a reasonable place to visit.

The very end was slightly misdirected with the audience applauding at Reah's contentment without noticing the chill of her increasing blank stare in the final fade. This last was particularly unfortunate as Christine Pritchard's performance from frisky start to that bleak stare was nuanced and immensely powerful. This was wonderful, emotional acting perfectly judged and the best possible reason for seeing this production.

Richard Corgan's barely contained anger was also very good. He was convinced that he was doing his best for his mother and that came through strongly. If his collapse into guilt seemed too glib then that was the fault of the writing.

Thinness of characterisation affected Rose but Pamela Merrick did a good job with what she had.

Khalid was very nicely under-played by Naoufal Ousellam. He was inclined to speak quietly so that I missed some of his words but it was generally a lovely, gentle, under-stated portrayal.

This was an absorbing, entertaining and positive play on a serious theme and Christine Pritchard's Reah certainly made it one to see.

Reviewed by: Victor Hallett

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At the Torch- reviewed by Assorted Edinburgh papers (02 August 2002)
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At the Torch- reviewed by Vivien Stoddart (The Stage) (15 February 2001)
At the Torch- reviewed by David Adams (14 February 2001)
At the Torch- reviewed by Ron Waters (08 February 2001)
At the Torch- reviewed by David Adams (21 October 2000)

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