WAITING FOR GOD
The Sarah Mann Company are back at BOAT and this time with a stage version of a popular sit-com that had some very familiar stars indeed. Michael Aitken’s script looks into the lives of two ‘senior’ characters who are thrown together when they meet in a retirement facility. That facility is run by the self serving and money grabbing egotist Harvey Baines and his long suffering side-kick Jane. Diana Brent is a retired photo journalist, never married and sharp tongued. To say that she is angry is understatement and Sarah Mann paints a very vivid picture of the cruel truth that hits one as you get older and start to fall to bits. She also delivers those well crafted lines like bombs – but the thing that troubled me is that where as in a TV script running at most 30 minutes, those acidic bombs come sensibly paced. In a play running at just under two hours they seem rather relentless and as such become rather monochromatic. It’s not the company at fault, far from it, the team are excellent to a man or should I say Mann.
My personal misgivings lie entirely with the script and Aitken uses passages of time in the place of what might once have been episode breaks. The effect is somewhat clunky.
All this might seem to indicate that I did not have a good time but that is far from the truth. This well ordered company certainly know how to deliver comedy, Mann herself can deliver and does so, once again inhabiting her role with confidence and class. Nick Bartlett is wonderfully unlikeable as the vile Harvey, a twitching mess of a human being careering through life with never a thought about those around him. Winnie Ikediashi plays Jane very differently from Janine Duvitski in the original series and it is a very wise move. This Jane is confident but delusional, she is awakened from her religious prudery by Diana’s sexual awakening and finally gets her man.
Geoffrey is played by Jack Kristiansen with wonderful restraint, ambling on and off stage and muttering about his tragically dysfunctional marriage to his promiscuous wife yet at the same time caring for the wellbeing of his father.
Once again Paul Moriarty show his skill at portraying comedic characters, this time the libidinous Basil, a disengaged doctor and finally an hilarious performance as the bumbling and dementia stricken local vicar. Sarah Ann Barfoot has the toughest job as the single straight role in the comedy, with just a few, but well delivered, comedy lines. But her presence is essential as the balance in the piece, her need for love pitched against Diana Brent’s denial of love.
Sue Batchett has two roles both of which deliver some of the best comedic moments of the evening, first as the “mountain of cardigans” and later as the gung-ho lady undertaker.
I reserve though my thoughts on the portrayal of Tom Ballard to last. Nathan Ariss is the star of the evening, he drifts into the scenario, unworldly, detached and mysterious. His relationship to Diana is so well delivered that it is really believable and why wouldn’t she find him both frustrating and at the same time attractive.
Once again Sean Chapman has created a stylish and effective setting and dressed the cast with some well chosen costumes and plenty of them too, by doing this we are presented with an effective representation of the passage of time. Nathan Ariss and Nick Bartlett have co-directed the whole and it moves along with a real sense of pace that probably comes from their skill rather than the script.
So in summing up, The Sarah Mann Company are a class act and far better than this flawed script that would probably have been better left in the TV archive where it was much loved. When you look below then please know that the stars awarded are for the company, the play itself, well it would get less. And all things said, because I admire the company and they way they deliver, I had a good evening with plenty of laughs and some touching moments too.
Andrew Kay
August 17
Brighton Open Air Theatre
Rating:
