SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER

The Conor Baum Company return to the stage at Brighton Open Air Theatre for the second time this year after making their debut there last summer with a brilliant re-working of The House Of Bernarda Alba, Homestead, and earlier this year Electra. Two say that Baum is ambitious would be a serious understatement. He is clearly fearless when it comes to taking on major works of theatre. Both previous productions garnered massive acclaim from both audiences and press, so much so that both had been given a reprise.

This summer Baum has delivered a classic Tennessee Williams. Williams’ writing is intense, steamy and passionate. The text is dense and layered, complex emotions are peppered with occasional moments of humour. It’s not easy stuff for sure, at times uncomfortable and at times distressing. The gradual revelation that the young woman at the heart of the play is being cruelly manipulated and faces, at the hands of her family, a devastating and life changing surgery. It’s chillingly appalling, the machinations of a rich aunt, an ambitious young doctor and a greedy and needy mother and brother working to destroy a life for their pride and personal gain.

Sharon Drain

To pull off a piece like this requires a cast of exceptional talents and Baum has gathered such an ensemble. The rich aunt, Violet Venable, is played with unsettling arrogance and pomposity by Sharon Drain. It’s a monster of a role, a weighty text, in one sense, word heavy and yet, in Tennessee Williams’ script, their is an old world grace and charm. Drain delivers, in every sense, the stubborn, entitled grande dame riddled with delusions about the nature of her relationship with her deceased son and the circumstances of his demise.

Oliver Clayton

Oliver Clayton is Dr Cukrowicz, the ambitious young doctor in whom aunt Violet is placing her trust, hoping that his skills as a physician can deliver her revenge. And revenge is her driving force. It’s a beautifully delicate performance from Clayton, calm and understated, in contrast to Venable and indeed her sister and son Mrs Holly and George Holly. Deborah Kearne is as always rock solid as the greedy down at heel sister. She needs the money bequeathed by Sebastian to his two cousins and is not prepared to let anything get in the way of that. This is an unpleasant and un-likeable character and Kearne delivers just that as she ingratiates herself with aunt Violet and pushes George, her son, to force things forward at any cost, to gain those dollars.

Deborah Kearne and Jordan Southwell

Jordan Southwell is George, an insensitive, tennis racket wielding cad. His callous behaviour, further displayed when that tennis racket becomes weaponised, is chilling, he’s all smiles and compliments on the surface, but below there is a fierce greed and selfishness.

Peta Taylor

Flitting around aunt Violet is her obviously long-suffering and devoted servant, Miss Foxhill played by Peta Taylor with bustling and deferential charm. It’s a rightly understated performance that works perfectly to emphasise the oppressive nature of the Venable home as she delivers dossiers and that 5pm frozen daiquiri.

Jules Craig

Throughout the second part of the play we have the haunting presence of Sister Felicity, a nurse from the expensive sanatorium where Catherine has been placed. Charged with her care she hovers and tries to take control, failing at every step but never giving up. We catch glimpses of her as she stalks the action from every corner of the theatre like a demonic angel. Jules Craig has wonderful presence in the role.

Isabella McCarthy Somerville

Finally but by no means least we come to Catherine Holly, the central figure in this disturbing story. Cathy is the cause of aunt Violet’s anger, institutionalised by the family, a conspiracy created to harness the wild and disturbed nature of a beautiful young woman who has been used and manipulated by Sebastian, or so we gradually learn as she is badgered by the family and the doctor to reveal the truth. It’s not the truth that any of them want to hear, it’s a dark and ugly story of control, of shame and of sexual repression. There’s an unpleasant thread of racism and prejudice, the abuse of privilege and secrecy. Isabella McCarthy Somerville is simply magnificent in the role, the delicate southern belle, driven to distraction by her hidden truth, submitting to the doctors and their drugs but hanging on by the most fragile of threads to a reality. And in the roles she has the gift of some of Williams’ most hauntingly beautiful and poetic writing, huge swathes of script delivered with such clarity and force.This is a stellar performance from an actor of immense talents.

Chully Mullock’s costumes evoke perfectly that sense of time and place and with such impressive detail. They work so well that there is no sense that these are in fact costumes, they sit on the cast with comfort and reality.

Baum’s masterfully crafted drama builds on each and every every role and on each and every member of this remarkable company. His carefully delivered yet simple set displays a sense that the human encroachment on nature is being reversed and that nature is fighting back. The soundscape is never intrusive, the music, compositions by Stefan Gregory and Hampus Naesilius work so beautifully and the drifts of mist lend a real sense of a Southern American grand house on the edge of the wild swamps, even on a chill and rainy Brighton night. Baum knows how to use every inch of that long thrust stage to great effect and using the tiered seating for entrances and exits he expands on that world.

BOAT’s open air acoustic can often cause problems but not here, this cast deliver every word with purity and clarity, and all without the aid of amplification, exemplary stage craft!

Don’t miss this, seriously classy and accomplished theatre making from a company that is making a very solid impression.

Andrew Kay

28 August

Brighton Open Air Theatre

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