See production photographs
Review:
ONLY a writer with the talent of Bob Larbey (The Good Life, As Time Goes By, etc) could write a comedy on a subject as harrowing as the onset of senility, and only an outstanding cast could stage it successfully. Bournemouth Little Theatre Club has provided us with just that in Larbey’s A Month of Sundays, which is set in a rest home where two residents, Cooper and Aylott, cover their fear of what awaits them with a brave veneer of humour.
Cooper is on stage throughout and drives the emotional development of the play with his acerbic wit but also his glimpses of vulnerability. It is difficult to imagine a better interpretation of the part than Andrew Whyatt’s. Quite apart from the feat of memory and the physical tour de force of creating a stiff, bent old man throughout, he was in command of the whole emotional range. The waspish verbal slapstick is a gift to an actor and Whyatt made the most of it. Even more impressive was his under-stated but clear depiction of Cooper’s other side: the hurt when he learnt that his grandson did not want to visit him, the sweetness in comforting Nurse Wilson, the anguish at watching Aylott join what they called the ‘zombies’ in the terrifying world of dementia.
If there was a criticism, it was that Cooper’s several monologues lacked light and shade. It was an interesting decision by the director to play most of them in exactly the same place on stage, in exactly the same pose. It was natural and believable, but it can’t have helped the actor.
That Cooper’s relationship with his friend was so convincing owed much to Don Gent’s playing of Aylott. The characters could hardly be more different, but Gent showed us why would-be alpha-male Cooper responded to the sensitive, gentle Aylott. His descent into senility at the end of the play was both credible and deeply moving.
As Cooper’s daughter, Julia, Lotte Fletcher-Jonk’s portrayal of duty and frustration, affection and irritation, will have been uneasily familiar to anyone who has had to pay regular visits to a ‘difficult’ elderly parent. In some ways it is a play as much about families as about old age, and her anguished ‘I do wish you’d talk to me’ – although, as usual, her father was holding forth – was one of the play’s most affecting lines. Stewart Barlow made the most of his rôle as her husband, Peter: a well-meaning but basically helpless dork who was no match for Cooper’s biting wit.
Hayley Tucker (Nurse Wilson) showed a youthful zest that contrasted well with Cooper’s ‘crabbèd age’, and she more than played her part in conveying the genuine tenderness between them; as the play progressed, what had seemed like uncertain stagecraft developed into a gaucheness that was both appropriate and endearing. The trap of caricature yawns at the feet of whoever plays cleaning woman Mrs Baker, yet Cathy Murray not only avoided it but gave a lesson in acting via facial expressions.
A Month of Sundays cannot be the most difficult play to stage in terms of set, lighting and costumes, but in none of these was there a jarring note. Director Virginia Harrington brought just the right amount of movement to what could be rather a static piece, and used that movement skilfully to highlight the emotional crises throughout the play.
It is no surprise that when the play was in the West End, it won an Evening Standard award for best comedy of the year. The Bournemouth Little Theatre Club did it more than justice.
John Newth |
poster