Lipman and Kendal’s fine vintage display
FELICITY KENDAL, 70, versus Maureen Lipman, 71: here is the stage’s answer to one of those veterans’ tennis matches at Wimbledon. the pace is not what it was, but there are clever dropshots to savour.
the Misses Kendal and Lipman co-star in a new production of Peter Shaffer’s 1987 play Lettice & Lovage. this is the one about Lettice Douffet, a dotty tour guide at an English country house who becomes bored by her spiel.
the show opens with Lettice (Miss Kendal) slowly becoming more and more outrageous as she jazzes up her tours. She is sacked by strict Miss Schoen (Miss Lipman), but they eventually become friends.
Miss Kendal reprises her round- eyed innocent routine. a little of her goes quite a long way and here we have a lot of her.
in an iffy wig, she looks not unlike a surprised shih tzu.
Miss Lipman’s urgency drifts a little, but she has flashes of anarchic comedy, as when Miss Schoen drinks too much of Lettice’s lethal homemade cordial made with lovage. the potion, says Lettice, is ‘very enlarging’ — and just what prim Miss Schoen needs. Sir Peter Shaffer, a friend of the Prince of Wales, died only last summer, yet the play already feels dated, its language being ornate and computers being referred to as newfangled horrors.
THE strongest passages are those when Shaffer tears into the architectural profession for its post-war neglect of beauty. Miss Schoen fantasises about a terrorism group called the END (the Eyesore negation Department), devoted to defiling architectural carbuncles. architects have ‘debauched the public imagination’ with their modernist ideas.
it is a pity this peppery iconoclasm is wrapped up in a plot that today feels somewhat fusty. and yet the eccentricity of Lettice and the quieter individualism of Miss Schoen have their attractions.
Director Sir trevor nunn could do with a kick up the buttresses. as so often with him, the pace is glacial. the evening lasts more than two-and-a-half hours, but it feels like three-plus.
Selfish Sir trevor should remember that many theatregoers have tiring day-jobs and face early starts the next morning.
DIRTY old men may enjoy Our Ladies Of Perpetual Succour, which depicts the yearnings and mishaps of a group of Oban schoolgirls who travel to Edinburgh for a choir competition. i found its sweary, groin-thrusting humour terribly forced, and much of the shrieky Scots dialogue incomprehensible.
Six tartan- skirted lassies take the stage and sing Mendelssohn’s Lift thine Eyes. Seconds later they are sucking on ciggies and discussing implausible sexual conquests. Few sentences are without an F-word. alan Warner’s 1998 novel, the Sopranos, has been adapted by Lee Hall.
Little time is spent establishing the genteel facade in order to accentuate the bathetic comedy of these angels’ filthy inner urgings. When it comes to outrage, Mr Hall and director Vicky Featherstone should remember ‘less is more’.
Some of the music — classical pieces plus quite a lot of songs by Jeff Lynne ( of Electric Light Orchestra fame) — is sung well.
the girls are played with energy, Karen Fishwick the best of the bunch as a rebellious goodiegoodie. near the end it strains for an unearned sentimentalism, but unless you have a thing about foul-mouthed teenagers boasting about their conquests, this is one to avoid.