|
|
|
In the garden where they played as children, two long-parted sisters gather after their father's death, but their relationship is threatened by a secret the family nurse is all too willing to tell. As night falls on the summerhouse, the sisters must each confront the ghosts of their pasts - but is there something more out there in the darkness? Ayckbourn's lively chiller is a safe bet for an easy evening's entertainment and will no doubt prove popular. Battered ex-alcoholic Annabel has returned from Tasmania to inherit her brutal father's country house, but upon reaching the house, jet-lagged and tetchy, she finds her father's nurse, Alice, waiting in the garden, ready with some news. The younger sister, Miriam (left behind all these years to care for her father whilst Annabel was living the fast life), killed the old man! And Alice, eager to go to the police, has a letter in the father's handwriting complaining he is being drugged. Should Annabel pay the nurse off to save her sister, or pocket the money herself? Is there no sisterly love? When no bargain can be struck, the snake in the grass (we won't say who) is shoved down a well by psychotic sibling Miriam. Problem solved. But the centre of gravity shifts at that moment, possibly providing the key to the play. Until this point, older Annabel is in control; heir to the house, woman of the world, and arbiter of her murderous sister's fate, she has sought to minimize fuss, put things in order, and sell the house to move to "a nice two bedroom in Fulham". She is Tory woman. The blue-rinse audience in the Playhouse chortle at her wisecracks. When Annabel tells her tearful sister she "looks a mess" and deserves prison for being so stupid - not stupid for killing her father, but stupid for not getting away with it - you suspect these elderly patrons have said to their children, "pull yourself together", perhaps even, "get on your bike". But keeping a stiff upper lip can mean closing your eyes. The snake won't negotiate her blackmail demand. Miriam won't bow down, and keeps a-killing. The structure is reminiscent of Philip Roth's 'American Pastoral', in which the perfect teenage daughter of perfect parents in a perfect town becomes a terrorist, causing the bewildered parents to simply disintegrate. Crestfallen Annabel, grasping for pills as her heart weakens, must confront life as it is. The second half of the play explores the secrets lying at the bottom of Annabel and her sister's mental buckets- child abuse, domestic violence, and their general sense of failure. One could complain that these last themes have been done to death since at least the early nineties. Whether Ayckbourn dressed it up as a ghost story, a comedy, or turned it into a punch and judy show, this play would still consist of mixed-up characters seeking release-though-therapy, unable to become adults because of childhood traumas. Human nature is, in sum, pathetic. Yet the play remains entertaining. The actors make the oddball characters curiously watchable. Rachel Atkins (Eastenders, Grange Hill) is nicely slimy as the snake, slithering about the attractive green set. One let-down is the few scary set pieces that are, at best, noticeable. The music, too, alerts us to when we should be scared in a rather unashamed manner. Snake in the Grass is a nice play. Take your granny. She'll love it. Ben O'Loughlin, 28.01.03 |
 |
