The March on Russia
Playwright: David Storey Director: Alice Hamilton Orange Tree Theatre, Clarence Street, Richmond, Surrey (020-8940 3633) Until 7 October Running time: 2hrs 20mins (including interval)
“It is a long time since I have seen a tasselled lampshade on stage. Or an antimacassar.” But then it is a long time, said Susannah Clapp in The Observer, since I have heard “such gradually uncoiling, slowly deepening dialogue” as that in David Storey’s The March on Russia. Storey, who died in March, was celebrated for his depictions of northern working-class life. His novel This Sporting Life (1960) – later turned into a film by Lindsay Anderson – was based on the writer’s early career as a rugby league professional. (As much “athlete as aesthete”, Storey once biffed The Guardian’s Michael Billington after getting an adverse review.) The March on Russia, a fine later play (1989) set in a retirement bungalow near the Yorkshire coast, is firmly within that tradition, possessing an “intense naturalism that suggests personal experience”.
As in Chekhov, “not a lot seems to happen but, in reality, an immense amount does”, said Billington in The Guardian. An elderly couple, the Pasmores, are marking their diamond wedding anniversary with their three middleaged children. At first, the pair’s bickering is “rancorously funny”; they even use their ailments as a “form of one-upmanship”, so that his pneumoconiosis (he used to work down the mines) trumps her hysterectomy. But with great skill, Storey slowly reveals Mr Pasmore’s private disintegration, and the family becomes a microcosm of the wider world’s disappointments. Sue Wallace is particularly fine as Mrs Pasmore, a plucky figure whose sadness is revealed only in her eyes. And Ian Gelder is “terrific” as Mr Pasmore, said Kate Maltby in The Times, while Sophia Simensky’s costume design “artfully delineates just how far each of the three siblings has come from their working-class roots”.
Every line “sings with rueful authenticity”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. This play offers “Chekhovian richness by way of dour kitchen-sink realism”, and Alice Hamilton’s revival of it is “exemplary”. CD of the week Elli Ingram: Love You Really Island £7.99 The Brightonian’s debut album “oozes class”, as she soars and scats, her voice “arcing over a mix of jazz, soul and hip-hop” that variously brings to mind Lauryn Hill, Frank- era Amy Winehouse and Steely Dan (Sunday Times).