WHEN WE ARE MARRIED
Garrick Theatre,
London WC2
Opened 27 October, 2010
****
Something about J.B. Priestley's 1938 play seems conducive to de luxe
comedy casting. Like its last West End outing in the mid-1990s, this
revival boasts more comic names than any first-run television channel
could now muster in a given season. In truth, it is a finely
constructed piece: fourteen roles, almost all with their due quota of
delicious moments, and a central half-dozen in which individual and
ensemble delights combine. Christopher Luscombe is an accomplished
director of stage comedies, lavishing care and attention but always in
service of the laughs... indeed, so much attention that, when the
curtain first rises, Simon Higlett's set design of a well-to-do
Edwardian Yorkshire parlour gets a round of applause to itself.
The three main couples, all featuring one self-satisfied and one, well,
redeemable partner, are gathered to celebrate their joint silver
wedding anniversary, only to be greeted by the news that the locum
pastor who joined them on that day was not duly authorised to perform
marriages, and so for the past 25 years they have been living in... no,
they can't say it. It's a fertile set-up, both for comedy and for
Priestley's point, not unlike that in his An Inspector Calls, that our
responsibilities to each other go beyond the merely formal. When one of
them reassures another, “You've been the
same as a good wife to him,” under the laugh we appreciate that
just fulfilling spousal duties with diligence does not, in personal
terms, add up to being a
husband or wife.
As the termagant Clara Soppitt, Maureen Lipman pulls off the unusual
feat of prowling gawkily, as if she were a vampire stork. No wonder Roy
Hudd's drunken press photographer manages at least a quintuple take on
being confronted by her. Sam Kelly is pitch-perfect as her husband, the
worm that turns. The sextet is completed in fine fettle by David
Horovitch, Susie Blake, Michele Dotrice and most surprisingly Simon
Rouse, best known for years as a grim Detective Chief Inspector on The Bill. Lynda Baron also shines
as a gleefully blunt-spoken charwoman. This may be a couple of hours of
sentimental escapism as the jaws of austerity close on us, but when it
is crafted with such mastery, who can begrudge it?