| press
reviews of september in the rain 2008 |
|
Holidays aren’t what they used to be. Many of us jet off in search of sunshine and new experiences in foreign countries several times a year. John Godber’s play of 1964 September in the Rain takes us back to the days when England still had a mining industry and a week away was an annual event to be anticipated and then stored as a treasured memory. Or perhaps not so treasured. Liz and Jack have been coming to Blackpool each year from their early married days to their pensioner years. These trips began with a bus journey and will end with one. In between there are cars, notably a Ford Popular. It always rains most of the time, naturally. They squabble and make up, form superficial relationships with the other residents of the boarding-houses they patronise and occasionally allow themselves a treat. In many ways they are the proverbial chalk-and-cheese couple. Jack in his own words “works in a hole in the ground”. He can’t really relax properly, is willing to take umbrage or pick a fight and sees no point in getting a sun-tan or wasting money on presents for friends and family. A thorough-going grouse, in fact. Liz is softer, more out-going and generous and willing to embrace new experiences. Jack, however, has the greater emotional needs. All this is played out in Matt Devitt’s production against a bright cut-out set by Christine Bradnum which has elements of McGill seaside postcards and a superb sequence of mobile components – that Ford Popular, Blackpool Tower, the auditorium of the Winter Gardens, and more. Black-and-white slides remind us that we are watching a fiction with factual roots. It all places quite a burden on the two actors. Claire Storey makes Liz a live wire, preening in her flowered dress and not entirely subdued by plastic raincoat and scarf. She’s irritating in her need to have most things her own way, yet sympathetic in her affection for her family and friends and her unstated but evident love for her husband. Shaun Hennessy doesn’t play Jack for sympathy at all, yet he makes him into someone who is more than (and perhaps less) a symbol of a vanished way of life. You wince at his earthiness (every other adjective an expletive) but understand that he cannot do otherwise. There’s genuine tenderness as he makes up to Liz after one of their most cataclysmic quarrels with the gift of expensive seats for a performance of The Student Prince. And you believe in his tears as the fantasy on the stage within the stage reaches its climax. |
WHAT'S
ON STAGE – Wednesday 27 August
|
A revival of the gentle side of Godber’s Jack Time’s moved on a generation since John Godber’s play first saw light in 1983, and so have the characters, Godber now admitting Jack and Liz portray his parents, rather than grandparents as originally claimed. And we can see them in the light of his later piece, Our House, where a teacher-turned-writer helps his widowed mother move from her long-time home. Its scenes recalling her married life show even the epic rows as a matter of pride between husband and wife. September sees the rowing parents on holiday; in Blackpool, as always, and, as always, in rainy September. But that was the South Yorkshire miners’ holiday, fitting the St Ledger being run at Doncaster. All that’s different this year is the guest-house. Their room’s an initiation test, near the toilet (no en suite back then), small and with its roof sloping over the wash-basin. You had to graduate through years of regular custom to the best rooms. Jack complains about this, and a lot besides, to Liz but rarely to others. And Liz becomes so fed-up with his sulks and rages she walks away. But you know the marriage isn’t over, something confirmed as he trails after her, dripping in his pakamac. In 1983 the piece was fast-moving, just a couple of chairs creating places now illustrated on Christine Bradnum’s seafront shelter set, with cutout figures from saucy seaside postcards scattered around. It’s colourful and amusing, with neat additions like Blackpool Tower or the family car with headlights, wipers and steam rising from the engine. But it moves Matt Devitt’s production towards the elegiac, making Claire Storey’s Liz, who speaks directly to us, more central than Jack. There’s a light touch of the young Dora Bryan to her performance, with a sympathetic tone to her memories. Shaun Hennessy captures Jack’s vulnerability and self-certainty, but the sense of danger’s lacking; no lorry-driver would back-down at his anger after a collision in heavy traffic. Yet, if it’s amusing rather than hilarious, the production, illustrated by slides of Blackpool at its crowded height, gives due dignity and value to the play’s honest, decent characters. |
REVIEWSGATE.COM
– Sunday 31 August|
On a bracing seaside prom, a very ordinary, late middle-aged man and his wife sit in a shelter decorated with pulchritudinous female figures and fat men in too-small swimming suits from saucy postcards of previous generations. Liz and Jack
are reminiscing (well, she is mainly), reliving and quarrelling
about their holidays across the years. Following this transformation it becomes obvious that their respective characters were set from the word go. They merely added hardening layers laid down like a coral reef over the many years of quarrelling and making up with each other. In Christine Bradnum’s delightful design even their Ford Popular car, dining table, sand castle and the superb Blackpool Tower are cartoon cutouts. From their Winter Gardens seats, Mario Lanza’s American tonsils warble The Student Prince as he sings of “Gaad”. Accustomed as we are to Godber’s writing which, following the shock of the new with Teechers and Bouncers, has majored in low key, overly sentimental and samey nostalgia, this quarter of a century-old play rouses more wry smiles than outright belly laughs. Some of the best bits in Matt Devitt’s production come when Claire Storey’s housewife and Shaun Hennessy’s bitter miner with a thoroughly romantic centre, having got to the top of the tower, are suffering from vertigo. |
THE
STAGE – Wednesday 27 August|
SEPTEMBER in the Rain may not be an advert for a holiday in Blackpool, but as a study of the ups and downs of relationships it is an excellent piece of theatre. Kicking off the Autumn season at the Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch, John Godber’s play follows Jack and Liz, a traditional Yorkshire couple, as they take a nostalgic look back at their annual summer trips to Blackpool. As the pair wend their way along memory lane, they recall arguments in the car, over whether to go up the Blackpool Tower and even over picking which donkey to ride – but behind the endless bickering lies many a funny tale. September in the Rain is based loosely on Godber’s childhood experiences and the play demonstrates the wit and eye for detail of his observational writing at its best. It is directed by Matt Devitt and performed seamlessly by Claire Storey and Shaun Hennessy, both members of cut to the chase, the theatre’s resident company of actor-musicians. The pair inhabit their roles to the extent you can imagine Shaun, who plays Jack, is actually destined to spend the remaining years of his life grafting down t’pit. Meanwhile Claire portrays brilliantly the frustrations and insecurities of Liz as she bears the brunt of Jack’s seasonal moods. But despite the petty squabbles, September in the Rain is a warm and touching play about how couples can grow old together yet still love each other. |
ROMFORD
RECORDER – Friday 29 August
