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Leocadia Burton Taylor Theatre until Saturday 10th January 2001 It is easy to slip into the quirky world of Jean Anouilh's
rose-tinted play. Everyone immediately feels sympathy for poor Amanda,
the Parisian milliner, who has been dragged to a French country estate
without knowing why. It comes as a shock to realise that everything
and almost everyone in this attenuated place is a living memory. They
are a part of an elaborate attempt to recreate the past. Amanda too soon learns her role: she is to lure the lovesick Prince Albert away from his besotted grief for the dead Leocadia. Kirsty Lothian is an extravagantly dotty Duchess. It is largely due to her excellent comic acting that the play beguiles. She is so fabulously fond of her melancholic nephew that she rebuilds a whole park for him: all the places Albert went with Leocadia during their unforgetable three day affair are resurrected on her estate. Poor Albert, however, cannot hold onto the memory of his dead love. Unable to witness his sorrow or even to bear anything blue in the house, the kind-hearted Duchess changes strategies. She brings in a "rosy little ogre" (Amanda), who happens to look like Leocadia, in the hope of jolting the hapless adolescent back to life. Simon Basey is a convincingly foppish Prince Albert, although he explodes too violently at times. The directors no doubt wanted to remind us of the darker
messages of this pièces roses - about the ferociousness of boredom
and the luridness of idealisation. Leocadia is like a magnificent
spider in Albert's head - a femme fatale who has him in her grasp.
Her passion is shown up as vitriolic, however - a mere self-analysis.
Amanda is well played by Rebecca Wilcox; she is the new broom who
sweeps away the cobwebs in this aristocratic museum. All the living
memories - the night club owner, the innkeeper, the ice-cream vendor
- who people the estate succumb to her fleshiness. She forces them
slowly away from their illusions.
Aruna Wittmann 6/2/2001 |