‘NIGHT, MOTHER
Hampstead Theatre until December 4. Tickets: 020 7722 9301
There is always room for American actors on British stages and Stockard Channing, whose distinguished career encompasses everything from Grease to The West Wing, is a clear favourite.
She delivers a moving performance as Thelma, a mother confronted with her daughter’s desperate and terrible decision to take her own life.
Marsha Norman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play had its UK premiere at Hampstead Theatre in 1985. This revival directed by Roxana Silbert is a timely reminder of the theatre’s significance in introducing British audiences to new American plays.
As the two characters circle each other in a remote house out in the boondocks, daughter Jessie (Rebecca Night) informs her mother Thelma that she will kill herself before the night is through. At first disbelieving, Thelma tries everything to prevent her from taking her own life as Rebecca draws up lists of practical, mundane chores that must be done in her absence.
They have been living together in mutual dependency since Rebecca’s husband left her for another woman. Her son is a drugaddled criminal and she suffers from epilepsy so she sees no future and is overwhelmed by a feeling of uselessness.
Channing is terrific as Thelma, throwing saucepans and tottering around Ti Green’s bleakly realistic set while Rebecca replaces cushion covers and folds laundry.
She never rises to hysterics, maintaining a zen-like calm as Thelma wheedles and cajoles, begs and pleads: “If you’ve got the guts to kill yourself, you’ve got the guts to stay alive.” Superb stuff.
During the 1960 obscenity trial of DH Lawrence’s groundbreaking novel, prosecutor Mervyn Griffiths-Jones sounded like a drowning man when he asked, “Is it a book that you would wish your wife or your servants to read?” After all the charges were dropped, the book flew off the shelves faster than Connie Chatterley’s underwear.
The story of an incendiary affair between a gamekeeper and the Lady of the Manor is the stuff of cliché, but to parody it well enough to have audiences screaming with laughter takes some talent. The Happy Idiot theatre company has that talent in spades.
Writer Lawrence Russell’s thorough knowledge of the book grounds this raucous, saucy and confident touring show in the rich comedy earth.
Russell, who also plays Clifford Chatterley, fillets the text without destroying the narrative and makes a few additions, including the showgirl’s legs grafted onto his war-damaged torso that, he is warned, may take on a life of their own.
The dialogue lies somewhere between Carry On films and Blackadder (the final series). Christina Baston is funny and sexy as Lady C and is well supported (arf, arf) by Wesley Griffith’s robust Mellors and Rebecca McClay’s housekeeper/nurse Mrs Bolton.
Replete with bad taste jokes, pink balloons deployed as private parts and a little touch of panto in the performances, this is rude and comfortably outrageous. Give the servants a night off and go.