Funny pair, quirky play... should be a perfect fit
The Clothes They Stood Up In (Nottingham Playhouse) Verdict: Second-hand Bennett ★★★✩✩
THIS should have been a marriage made in theatre heaven: two of our most beloved, quintessentially quirky and comic actors, Adrian Scarborough and Sophie Thompson, in the staging of an Alan Bennett novella about a bizarre kind of burglary, which strips a couple first of their worldly possessions (including used loo brush) and, second, of the ‘ marital deceptions’ that kept this pair ticking along.
It’s a parable of sorts about losing ‘stuff’ — and finding out that possessions matter less than living, loving relationships, which neither knew much about before the robbers cleaned out the contents of their London flat.
There’s a brief explanation of the robbery, but it is certainly not the point of this little literary gem.
Alas, it is now the focus in Scarborough’s
adaptation, dragged unconvincingly into postBrexit Britain. A portrait of a marriage becomes an overstretched, overstated whodunnit, losing Bennett’s deliciously amused, ironic tone in the process.
Still, even second-hand Bennett has its pleasures. For meek, repressed Rosemary, stooped and drooping before her time, the robbery proves liberating and revelatory, feelings somewhat hammered home by Thompson, suddenly all cheerful, jawdropping, eyes-popping wonder.
Venturing into her local shop to restock the essentials (having always stuck to the safety of Marks & Spencer), she is charmed by nice Mr Anwar, the widowed shopkeeper (an echo of Bed Among The Lentils, one of Bennett’s brilliant Talking Heads).
Into the uncluttered flat sweeps Dusty, counsellor for victims of crime and, slouched comfortably on Rosemary’s new beanbags, the women discuss grief and the need to ‘nurse your womb’. Stirred by daytime telly’s Lorraine Kelly, Rosemary considers ‘honing her marital skills’. ‘I’ve grown,’ she beams.
By contrast, Scarborough struggles to enliven Mozart-mad Maurice, a deadly dull, quietly oppressive solicitor with a dirty secret, who cannot be shaken from his rigid routine.
Slightly effortful entertainment.