Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh
Four stars
Thanks to a flurry of co-productions between
theatres in Scotland, Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum is currently associated with two
top-quality ensembles. While Mark Thomson's staging of Takin' Over the
Asylum
moves from Glasgow to Edinburgh, boasting an impressive cast through the ranks,
Jemima Levick's classy revival of the JB Priestley time play settles in Dundee
after a run in the capital with an equally persuasive company.
The poignancy of this 1937 drama rests less narratively,
in its riches-to-rags tale, than structurally, in the contrast between its
three acts. It begins in well-made-play mode as the Conway family hold an airy
house party – all dressing-up games, jovial banter and bourgeois
inconsequentiality. There's nothing to unsettle an interwar West End audience
until Priestley takes a startling break from the formula. Boldly, he flashes
forward to show the same characters 20 years on, their hopes dashed, their
promise unfulfilled. What seemed breezy and slight becomes weighted with
emotion.
JM Barrie
played similar temporal tricks, but usually with a supernatural element. Here, Levick
adds a spooky quality of her own by placing ghostly figures through the
transparent walls of Ti Green's cinematically proportioned set. It's as if the
different periods were parallel universes disconcertingly rubbing against each
other.
For several of the actors, it effectively means playing
two characters. Sally Reid, already acting against type as the upper-crust
Madge, transforms from a bright-eyed socialist campaigner to a dowdy and
embittered school mistress. She does both brilliantly.
Elsewhere, it's the detail you notice: the
painful stillness of Richard Conlon's underachieving Alan; the killing cruelty
of Irene Macdougall's matriarchal Mrs Conway; the stony faced social climbing
of Andy Clark's Ernest Beevers; and the air of haunted distraction of Emily
Winter's Kay. You'd call it sentimental if it wasn't for Priestley's political prescience:
this self-regarding social class deserved everything it was about to get.
Mark Fisher
At Dundee Rep, 13–30 March (01382 223530).
Details: www.dundeerep.co.uk
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