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A PENNY FOR A SONG at the Oxford Playhouse This play, conceived by playwright John Whiting in wartime, was written in 1950 and substantially revised twelve years later. The revision enabled a revival after a disappointing West End run of only thirty-six performances. This split between a serious starting point and stage-worthiness seems to govern the play's success but, in its current outing as a vehicle for the Oxford Stage Company at the Playhouse, its light frothy farce is whipped up too clumsily with stern politics. The play takes place on a Dorset estate during the Napoleonic war. The set had a village hall look to it: its sky-painted backcloth leaving a shallow stage area for the actors; half-painted doors and windows were perhaps a subtle comment on the state of panic in a country on the eve of invasion, but were more likely first night oversights. The plot centres on the resident Bellboys family and visitors - dilettante Hallam Matthews, angry young man Edward Sterne and Commander Selincourt respectively, and their preparations for war. These take the form of a number of unlikely plans set up at some disjointed length in the first half but realised with humorous consequence in the second. The outstanding contributions came from Brian Protheroe's Selincourt and Charles Kay's Timothy Bellboys' fully-realised mayhem. Gabrielle Drake as Hester Bellboys grew more entertaining but was short of role (as indeed all the female characters proved to be). Julian Glover as Matthews (with a nod for his slimy servant Breeze) provided the development in the plot but was unfortunately pitted half the time against the wooden-playing of the young people: Jody Watson's Dorcas Bellboys and Richard Lynch's Sterne. The latter a politically-correct mercenary was interpreted, surely as a result of directorial intervention, as the serious voice of the play. This mistake skewed the production intolerably as we, and Glover, had to sit through his lengthy and unsophisticated preaching. The character should act as a foil for Dorcas and his beliefs be sent up along the lines of Rik Mayall's socialism in the Young Ones. He is after all only interested in converting the most nubile character in the play. Luckily Sterne was absent for most of the second half allowing the comic plot to go through its prefigured motions but the interpretation damaged the play's structure. Even the final moments, when Dorcas points to his French child companion's experience as the true commentary on war, became a hysterical aside; instead of the intended deft touch of a more bitter truth. I left the theatre feeling amused but that I had probably seen similar themes handled better in Dad's Army. It all goes to prove that repertory warhorses can still have an unwelcome kick for those who revive them. Bridget Khursheed |