A Man for all Seasons, Things we do for Love, Kind Hearts and Coronets

5 Aug 2005 in Dance & Drama, Highland

Pitlochry Festival Theatre, until October 2005

DRAMA HAS NEVER featured largely at Eden Court Theatre, although I have the impression that audiences for plays were increasing in numbers during the last year or two. With that theatre closed for refurbishment for the next eighteen months, perhaps more, it is certainly worth considering a trip down the A9 to Pitlochry Festival Theatre.

A Man for All Seasons

Drama is presented there to world-class professional standards, and there can be few ensembles of such fine and experienced actors anywhere in the UK. They offer six plays from April through to October, many of the actors being involved in three, if not four of them. It is a pleasant experience, too, to see the same actor in different roles.

I went down for two days, with a one-night stay, and saw the first three of the six plays to be presented this season. If you study the current brochure, and you’re keen to see four plays at one visit, it is possible with a two-night stay.

In between performances, it is a popular pursuit to travel round this part of Perthshire for the scenery and the many good eating places. You could also spend time visiting the new and fascinating Explorers Garden which is adjacent to the theatre, or be shown round the theatre and discover some of the secrets of how they do things behind the scenes.

Since it was premiered in 1960, I have yearned to see Robert Bolt’s wonderful play, ‘A Man for All Seasons’. Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s new production is a superb presentation that flows smoothly through the many scene changes, achieved by the slightest tweaking of the set; just one of the many fingerprints which raise their productions to such a high level. The lighting and the setting are wholly appropriate.

Ayckbourn knows only too well how to leaven the plot with some of the funniest situations you’ll ever see from this author

It is among the greatest of historical plays, portraying the plight of Sir Thomas More who resists Henry V’s desire to dispense with a wife who cannot produce a male heir as a matter of political expediency. More’s Christian principles and his deep sense of morality land him in hot water with the King, and it this drama which is played out with many of the great historical characters – The Duke of Norfolk, Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer and others.

Dougal Lee, an actor of outstanding talent, plays Sir Thomas More with uncanny sensitivity and fortitude, ranging from the joy of his family life, to his degradation an a cell, leading to his execution. Click here to download Arthur Brocklebank’s interview with Dougal Lee in mp3 format.

Dougal Lee, also appears in a major role in Alan Ayckbourn’s hilarious comedy “Things We Do for Love”. Down deep, this is a serious play with many black moments. But Ayckbourn knows only too well how to leaven the plot with some of the funniest situations you’ll ever see from this author. This includes a cleverly arranged stage fight which brings gasps of disbelief from the audiences.

Barbara, to quote from the brochure, is ‘a frosty forty-something living a solitary, well-ordered life in her elegant apartment.’ When her old school chum Nikki turns up with a handsome oceanographer called Hamish in tow, the gradual build up of tensions and secret passions are aroused to fever pitch, and the script catches fire with a vengeance – and a lot of laughter.

The £5,500 set, built by the theatre’s own technicians for this production only, is cleverly presented at three levels; the main living room, the flat below, and, it has to been seen to be believed, the upstairs bedroom of which we are given an infuriating glimpse up to knee level. There are lots of “goings-on” in that bedroom and perhaps its as well that we are forbidden a full view. What happens in the flat below cannot, in any circumstances, be revealed in this review!

“Kind Hearts and Coronets” was, of course a famous film by Robert Hamer on Edwardian manners, the gentlemanly art of murder, and class snobbery, and featured Alec Guinness and Dennis Price in virtuoso performances, the former as the entire D’Ascoyne family.

This production is adapted for the stage by Giles Croft. It is certainly a very clever and skilful adaptation, and it goes without saying that, as in the other plays, the acting is superb. The scene, unchanged throughout the play, is a dark one with a back-drop like a high wall with numerous panels opening at appropriate moments to reveal assorted characters referred to in the dialogue.

In the film it was easy to change locations with cuts, but on stage this is brought about by electronic trolleys that rumble off and on carrying furniture for the next scene, and sometimes complete with the players. I enjoyed and appreciated the inventiveness of this for the first half hour or so, but after that I became slightly irritated with it. Perhaps I was waiting for one of the trolleys to go off its course and end up in the first row of the audience, or break down halfway to its allotted position. Neither happened.

A fine play indeed laced with subtle and pointed humour, and, of course, cleverly acted, but not one that will remain in my database of plays which I would love see again and again.