REVIEW
by
Tom King
by
Tom King
LIVE theatre is back, Southend Shakespeare Company is back, live audiences are back. The wave of post-Covid exuberance that washed through the Palace Theatre, Westcliff, mean that SSC could have staged the Uzbekistan postal directory, and still received a warm reception.
As it happens, SSC has chosen a play that in some ways is almost as challenging, dramatically speaking, as the above-mentioned Uzbekistan's favourite bedtime read.
The Vortex, premiered in 1924, is approaching 100-years-old, and certainly displaying its age. It was Noel Coward's break-through play, and at the time it caused a sensation, thanks to its focus on two taboo subjects, drug-taking and extra-marital sex (there is also coded reference to Coward's homosexuality, but I'd guess that it was so coded that audiences didn't notice at the time). Almost every character in the play suffers from some sort of Freudian neurosis and insecurity. The exception is the dull, almost emasculated husband played by Andrew Sugden. He sensibly goes to bed before all the tortured emotional tantrums really gear up.
The Vortex's structure and setting is of the classic 'Anyone for tennis?', drawing room genre, of the type that formed such a potent target for the radical playwrights of the 1950s and 60s. The setting shifts from a posh London town house to an equally posh country house party. Hostess and guests pass the time standing around, clutching drinks, making snide remarks about one another, ranting about how bored they are, and suffering the odd breakdown. None of the characters, apart from Nicola Green's maid, seems to have much of a work ethic (they are thoroughly unlike Coward himself in this respect).
Unsurprisingly, the country house party breaks down into all-round acrimony. This cockpit of tensions climaxes in a red-hot confrontation between mother and son that echoes Hamlet's violent ding-dong with his mater.
It is hard to have much sympathy, let alone empathy, with any of these people, especially the pivotal character, the vain, self-pitying actress Florence Lancaster, whose refusal to grow old gracefully precipitates much of the trouble.
But Southend Shakespeare Company's actors are alchemists, and once again they succeed in turning a rather mildewed text into powerful stagecraft. In the process, The Vortex suddenly starts, after all, to feel relevant to the concerns of a 21st century audience.
Much of the credit for this goes to an absolutely sizzling central performance from Vanessa Osborn, as Florence. The number of negatives you could use to describe Florence's emotionally volatile character is virtually limitless. They range from pathetic to infantile to delusional to hysterical to just plain tedious. Yet in the way she is unable to recognise her own ageing process, combined with the afflictions thrown up by the realities of advancing age, Florence is a truly tragic figure. She is even, perhaps, reflective of another Shakespearian tragic character, King Lear.
Vanessa Osborn handles the switch between the innumerable different facets of Florence's personality with athletic aplomb. It's a performance of scary intensity, and just when you think that it it can't become any more explosive, it erupts into a final, unforgettable display of pain in the final minutes of the play. Bravo, ma'am.
But she's not the only one. Jack Byrne as the drug-addict musician son (the role originally taken by Coward himself) is also a dab hand when it comes to cranking up the emotional power. He gives as good as he gets, in the tormented soul stakes, when it comes to the final showdown with his mother.
Also outstanding is Matthew Willis, who offers an entire lexicon of face and body language as Florence's young lover, a stuffed shirt Guards subaltern who shows his true colours in a final display of shallowness and turpitude. And Maddy Spink, as Nicky's fiancee Bunty, exactly captures the instability of a character who is in many respects a younger version of Florence (helping to explain why the pair come to detest one another). Tracey-Anne Bourne mixes exasperation and desperation as Florence's flirtatious friend and confidante, Helen.
What is missing from The Vortex, given that this is a Noel Coward play, is much display of the master's famous wit. At this stage of his career, Coward clearly hadn't realised that his metier lay in comedy, rather than Freudian melodrama. What he does provide is a scattering of peripheral characters who help to lighten the mood. These roles are handled with their usual finesse by SSC stalwarts James Carter (confrontational ass), Madeleine Ayres (empty-headed diva), and Ross Norman-Clarke (pompous but rather dim playwright). Between them they manage to conjure a few laughs out of a play that otherwise makes no concessions to light entertainment. No matter. The important thing is that Southend Shakespeare are back in town, and reminding us just how damn good they are. And if they do decide one day to stage the Uzbekistan postal directory, I wouldn't miss it for words.
The Vortex is at the Palace Theatre (Dixon Studio), Westcliff, until Saturday November 6. 01702 351135 www.southendtheatres.org.uk
As it happens, SSC has chosen a play that in some ways is almost as challenging, dramatically speaking, as the above-mentioned Uzbekistan's favourite bedtime read.
The Vortex, premiered in 1924, is approaching 100-years-old, and certainly displaying its age. It was Noel Coward's break-through play, and at the time it caused a sensation, thanks to its focus on two taboo subjects, drug-taking and extra-marital sex (there is also coded reference to Coward's homosexuality, but I'd guess that it was so coded that audiences didn't notice at the time). Almost every character in the play suffers from some sort of Freudian neurosis and insecurity. The exception is the dull, almost emasculated husband played by Andrew Sugden. He sensibly goes to bed before all the tortured emotional tantrums really gear up.
The Vortex's structure and setting is of the classic 'Anyone for tennis?', drawing room genre, of the type that formed such a potent target for the radical playwrights of the 1950s and 60s. The setting shifts from a posh London town house to an equally posh country house party. Hostess and guests pass the time standing around, clutching drinks, making snide remarks about one another, ranting about how bored they are, and suffering the odd breakdown. None of the characters, apart from Nicola Green's maid, seems to have much of a work ethic (they are thoroughly unlike Coward himself in this respect).
Unsurprisingly, the country house party breaks down into all-round acrimony. This cockpit of tensions climaxes in a red-hot confrontation between mother and son that echoes Hamlet's violent ding-dong with his mater.
It is hard to have much sympathy, let alone empathy, with any of these people, especially the pivotal character, the vain, self-pitying actress Florence Lancaster, whose refusal to grow old gracefully precipitates much of the trouble.
But Southend Shakespeare Company's actors are alchemists, and once again they succeed in turning a rather mildewed text into powerful stagecraft. In the process, The Vortex suddenly starts, after all, to feel relevant to the concerns of a 21st century audience.
Much of the credit for this goes to an absolutely sizzling central performance from Vanessa Osborn, as Florence. The number of negatives you could use to describe Florence's emotionally volatile character is virtually limitless. They range from pathetic to infantile to delusional to hysterical to just plain tedious. Yet in the way she is unable to recognise her own ageing process, combined with the afflictions thrown up by the realities of advancing age, Florence is a truly tragic figure. She is even, perhaps, reflective of another Shakespearian tragic character, King Lear.
Vanessa Osborn handles the switch between the innumerable different facets of Florence's personality with athletic aplomb. It's a performance of scary intensity, and just when you think that it it can't become any more explosive, it erupts into a final, unforgettable display of pain in the final minutes of the play. Bravo, ma'am.
But she's not the only one. Jack Byrne as the drug-addict musician son (the role originally taken by Coward himself) is also a dab hand when it comes to cranking up the emotional power. He gives as good as he gets, in the tormented soul stakes, when it comes to the final showdown with his mother.
Also outstanding is Matthew Willis, who offers an entire lexicon of face and body language as Florence's young lover, a stuffed shirt Guards subaltern who shows his true colours in a final display of shallowness and turpitude. And Maddy Spink, as Nicky's fiancee Bunty, exactly captures the instability of a character who is in many respects a younger version of Florence (helping to explain why the pair come to detest one another). Tracey-Anne Bourne mixes exasperation and desperation as Florence's flirtatious friend and confidante, Helen.
What is missing from The Vortex, given that this is a Noel Coward play, is much display of the master's famous wit. At this stage of his career, Coward clearly hadn't realised that his metier lay in comedy, rather than Freudian melodrama. What he does provide is a scattering of peripheral characters who help to lighten the mood. These roles are handled with their usual finesse by SSC stalwarts James Carter (confrontational ass), Madeleine Ayres (empty-headed diva), and Ross Norman-Clarke (pompous but rather dim playwright). Between them they manage to conjure a few laughs out of a play that otherwise makes no concessions to light entertainment. No matter. The important thing is that Southend Shakespeare are back in town, and reminding us just how damn good they are. And if they do decide one day to stage the Uzbekistan postal directory, I wouldn't miss it for words.
The Vortex is at the Palace Theatre (Dixon Studio), Westcliff, until Saturday November 6. 01702 351135 www.southendtheatres.org.uk