Theatreguide.London
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The Theatreguide.London Review
In March 2020 the covid-19 epidemic
forced the closure of all British theatres. Some companies adapted
by putting archive recordings of past productions online, others
by streaming new shows. Until things return to normal we review
the experience of watching live theatre onscreen.
Masks
And Faces
Finborough
Theatre Summer 2021
A warm and
witty comedy with just the right touch of sentimentality, this
delightful rediscovery comes from a tiny London fringe theatre that
specializes in rediscovering lost gems.
The 1852 play
by Charles Reade and Tom Taylor invents a fictional story about the
actual 18th century actress Peg Woffington. (A skilled
comedienne and fabled beauty, Woffington had achieved by the next
century an image not too different from the 21st Century's
idea of Jane Russell or Marilyn Monroe.)
The play
watches Peg foil a town rake confident he can make her his mistress,
gently let down an infatuated fan and thereby save his marriage, and
still have time and goodness of heart left over to help an impoverished
writer.
There is thus
opportunity in the play for social satire, light farce and honest
sentiment, and while the shifts in tone are sometimes abrupt, the play
manages to absorb them all in a unified and entertaining whole.
This online
production is a bit hit-and-miss, but it does succeed in capturing and
presenting the play's warm charm.
This is another
in the new art form of Zoom Theatre, with the actors each in their own
homes, performing for their computer cameras, and in one key way this is
the most successful example of the genre I've seen.
Director
Matthew Iliffe has guided his cast to speak and react to each other even
though they are actually playing directly to a camera. So, even though
we never see more than one person at a time, we do get the illusion of
them being in the same room and inhabiting the same reality – something
very few previous Zoom productions have achieved.
And since at
least the more sentimental parts of the play build on a sense of the
characters connecting with each other, this technical achievement richly
enhances the warm good humour.
But director
Iliffe is considerably less successful in another area, and blame for
the production's biggest weakness must be laid at his feet.
He does not
seem to have realized that a production built entirely on extreme
close-ups requires under- rather than over-acting, and he has clearly
ordered every one of his actors to play far too big and externally for
the medium.
While it may
not be literally true that everyone is constantly mugging and waving
their arms about (Some are), that is the impression the viewer is likely
to get, so in-your-face is the universal acting style.
Not even the
strongest actors in the company are completely free of this flaw, though
Amy McAllister (Peg), Matthew Ashforde (poor writer) and Sophie Melville
(country wife) are most able to snatch moments of behaving like real
human beings out of the general over-the-top-ness.
(Footnote: as a demonstration of their support, courage and folly, real-life theatre critics Fiona Mountford and Charles Billington play the small roles of two wannabe critics, and escape more-or-less unscathed.)
Gerald
Berkowitz
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