I always look forward to Elle Knight’s sophisticated productions because she invariably manages to re-examine wrongly neglected classics you couldn’t see anywhere else. How lucky are we in Lichfield to have this rich resource? To top it, for casting she has access to all the best local players, but it’s got to be said that for the 2012 Festival she has excelled even herself.
I’ve never seen The Browning Version, top post-war playwright Terence Rattigan being so criminally out of fashion so I was avid to see an Intimate Theatre production of this famous play in the luxury of the elegant George Hotel ballroom. It was, as I expected, beautifully done. In fact the reality exceeded all expectations. And because Elle can command all the great local actors, they were all there.
Fiona Willimott was on top form as Millie, the faithless, disdainful wife of retiring prep-school teacher Andrew Crocker-Harris. Stuart Goodwin as her lover, fellow teacher Hunter reached a new maturity and control with his part. Our own dear Stephen Brunton as the “diplomatic” headmaster showed just how accurate Rattigan’s observation could be. Patrick Jervis as the replacement teacher is new to me but one to watch; young, sharp, subtle and capable of showing hidden feelings. Hannah Davies excelled as his ingénue bride whose enthusiasm turned the knife in another woman’s heart.
With this play Graham Nicholls may have reached an acting career peak. To make this reticent, out of fashion figure sympathetic took guts but here we clearly saw stoicism as the final weapon against despair. Dr. Nicholls nails it big time, and I take my hat off to him. I’ve seen it, and I don’t want to see it again, because it could never be any better.
But there’s always a star, and here it’s James Bentley as the teenage pupil who has glimpsed the integrity of his teacher and presents him with a gift that makes up for all the ruin that surrounds. Beautifully natural, he has that talent before which we stand humbly in awe.
We needed an interval, and after it as a bonus we got A Talk in the Park, a tiny play by Alan Ayckbourn that is drop-dead clever – people escaping to the park on a Sunday who talk too much, a beautifully observed comic but worrying tribute to our human need to tell. It was funny and poignant, a miniature masterpiece from a playwright whose longer works look stronger but feel lighter. Another great evening for playgoers in lucky old Lichfield.
