It’s a hodgepodge of storylines, but thisWorldWar II drama has a Casablanca thrill to it
Verdict: A lot to keep your eye on ★★★✩✩
UNLESS you have four legs and body fur, a dog’s dinner is not often an appetising prospect.
One possible exception is this intriguing World War II melodrama set in 1940s America, which is illuminated by the perma-posh savoir faire of Patricia Hodge.
It starts off looking and sounding like a Noel Coward drawing-room comedy, with Hodge’s rich and haughty American matriarch firing off exquisitely turned one-liners. ‘I adore snooping,’ she remarks. ‘It shows an interest in life.’
She goes on to shape up as a latterday Lady Bracknell. But thanks to the return of her daughter after 20 years in Europe (with German husband and three kids in tow), Lillian Hellman’s story soon starts to look more like an Ibsen family tragedy, where long-buried secrets are set to be exhumed.
Particularly ripe with resentment is Geoffrey Streatfeild as Hodge’s middle- aged son, crushed by his mother’s withering wit — yet launching salvos of his own, while guzzling brandy at breakfast.
He, moreover, is on the precipice of an illicit affair with the wife of a dastardly Romanian count.
But it’s that count who supplies the central antagonism. Played by John Light, this scheming scoundrel who’s down on his uppers has unearthed a dangerous secret about the daughter’s furtive German husband — a man who claims to be a professional anti-fascist and has the broken fingers, bullet scars and tales of the Spanish Civil War to prove it.
Lacking a moustache to twirl, Light is ostentatiously inscrutable, striking surreptitious poses with artfully folded legs, pursed lips and contrapposto twists to the torso.
As the German husband, meanwhile, Mark Waschke is a handsome, sensitive, brave and highly intelligent freedom fighter.
Although Waschke’s brooding intensity nearly turns this Teuton into a Mills & Boon romantic fantasy, Hodge is pleased to note he doesn’t ‘ make platform speeches or try to convince people of anything’ . . . until, of course, he does both.
Not only do these two o men’s stories take the drama in the direction of a Casablanca type thriller, thriller even more intriguingly intriguingly, the deal they strike is reminiscent of the Maltese Falcon (perhaps unsurprisingly, given that the film is based on the book written by Hellman’s partner Dashiell Hammett).
Scarcely less intriguing is David Webber as the Paul Robeson-style butler, who seems forever on the brink of pulling a subversive stunt. And to the already overloaded cast you can add the three precocious children of Hodge’s warm yet oddly anonymous daughter (Caitlin FitzGerald).
Fascinating though this is in its many parts, the proliferation of themes, tone and characters precludes any deep emotional involvement.
Nor does it help that the sight lines in Ellen McDougall’s congested production are frequently terrible — one silent actor parked in front of four speaking ones.
Basia Binkowska’s design presents a plush, wealthy home fitted with walnut furniture, white carpet and magnificent wallpaper that displays a huge 19thcentury vista of the Rhine
punctured by pelmet and curtains.
All the while, an ominous hum suggests rising tension in Tingying Dong’s sound design although this could just be the theatre’s overactive air- conditioning . . . keep your coat on).
With so many strands, some theatregoers may wind up baffled about which one to follow. But hard not to find yourself engaged with this dramatic hodgepodge that somehow remains rather tasty.