The Anniversary
Grange Players
Grange Playhouse, Walsall
****
ANYONE watching this excellent production by Martin Groves cannot help seeing red.
Mum’s sitting room has a red carpet, red walls, red picture frames and red shelving. Moreover, the shelves and the picture frames are at unpredictable angles. You don’t know what to expect of them – and Mum, the mother who reigns so appallingly in her own crimson hell, also defies any attempt at forecasting what she will do next.
Bill MacIlwraith’s remarkable look at domestic disaster gives Mary Whitehouse the opportunity, in a splendidly-reined performance, to present a fearful harridan who lurks beneath a wheedling, smiling, purring persona. Any woman who enters the life of any of her three sons becomes an instant rival and is an immediate target for her venom.
SPARKS FLY
Karen (Stephanie Quance) is already well-established with Terry (Chris Waters). She knows Mum only too well. She fights back and she gives as good as she gets – but now she and Terry plan to make their escape to Canada, and Mum is not remotely delighted at the prospect of losing a son. But while Karen lets the sparks fly, Mum gives no extravagant sign of hurt. She remains as impassive as Karen is impressive.
Then there is Henry (Dale Roberts). He does not have a lady in his life – just an embarrassing secret to which everyone around him is privy. This is a fine, shambling account of one of life’s misfits.
Tom (Tomos Frater) is in many ways like his mother, except that where she simply murmurs malevolently he spits his disenchantment at a rate of knots. And he is in trouble because he has just brought home the feisty Shirley (Becki Jay), who is clearly not going to stand nonsense from an outrageous and possessive prospective mother-in-law any more than Karen does.
It’s quite a household and its story gets off to a wonderfully edgy start because – even before we meet its turbulent members – strobe lighting is used to supplement the all-round redness of the setting. It was a shame that the weather reduced the size of the first-night audience – because this is a production that deserves to be cheered from the rafters.
John Slim
(wwwbehindthearras.com)
Paul Marston - The Advertiser/Evening Mail
The Anniversary
The Grange Players
The Grange Playhouse
Walsall
THERE is genuine competition for top billing in this gripping black comedy by Bill MacIlwraith - it's between the excellent cast and the stunning red-and-white set.
Director Martin Groves certainly deserves praise for the way the story is presented, but he also designed the very imaginative living room of a scheming matriarch's south London home.
It cleverly gives the impression of luxury and - with tilting grand piano and lop-sided picture frames - a hint of the problems of a dysfunctional family and their reputation as cowboy builders.
This is an ideal setting for the action in which Mary Whitehouse gives a compelling performance as malicious Mum, the manipulative widow who holds a family party to mark her wedding anniversary, even though her husband has been dead several years.
She uses the occasion to emphasise control over her three sons, one daughter-in-law and Shirley, the new, pregnant girlfriend of her youngest offspring Tom (Tomos Frater), but this time Mum has to deal with a revolt...and she is up to the task.
Stephanie Quance is excellent as daughter-in-law Karen, who has the bottle to stand up to Mum, and there are sound contributions from Becki Jay (Shirley), Chris Waters (Terry) and Dale Roberts as Henry, the No 1 son with a taste for ladies' underwear...especially if he's wearing it!
Produced by Ian Eaton, The Anniversary from hell runs to January 16.
VERDICT: * * * *
PAUL MARSTON
