(seen at the performance on 29th May 2025)
Chloe Lamford takes all the plaudits for driving the show with her set designs. A circular flower garden is denuded as hope is lost, eventually becoming a grey enclosed office space.
With Jon Clark’s muted light sapping the spirits, the atmosphere is always perfectly attuned to the action.
This is the most expressive element of the entire production. The rest sees stars implode to leave a black hole where the emotional centre should be.
Unusually, director Dominic Cooke seems reluctant to undertake any risks at all with the play. He encourages a blandness which drains the characters of their background depth to a point where most of them feel superfluous.
A certain culpability resides with the casting decisions. On paper, real mother-and-daughter Imelda Staunton and Bessie Carter as Mrs Warren and Vivie must have seemed an artistic and commercial dream idea.
Sadly, it feels contrived and artificial in reality. We have to wait a very long 90 minutes before a final confrontation scene in which Staunton gains credibility in a haunting denouement.
While revealing much about her character, which is only hinted at earlier in the play, it also reveals the fundamental weakness of this endeavour. Simply, it is all about us watching Staunton and daughter, with deference given to that rather than the integrity of Shaw’s actual work.
It explains why most of the rest of the cast are left to drift. Kevin Doyle is perhaps the strongest of them. His morally bumbling Reverend Gardner is always interesting, the prods from errant son Frank (Ruben Joseph) neat sparring between unarmed opponents.
Robert Glenister does not really find the cad in Sir George Crofts, his attempts at seducing much younger Vivie almost apologetic from such a ruthless businessman.
Most difficult of all, Sid Sagar as Mr Praed fails to establish his credentials from the first scene. Partly due to inaudibility, but also seemingly confused as to where he fits into Vivie’s life and slightly defeated by the rhythm of his dialogue.
With the feeling that everybody is scared to stand up to the leading lady, there is no fission to drive what is usually a controversial play through its various dark encounters and revelations to a searing conclusion.
As passionless as a brothel encounter, badly lacking in tartness.
