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Review by: MisterOpinion, Feb 1, 2006 |
Film director Mike Leigh’s early work takes place in a suburban London subdivision that shares some aspects with TV’s Wisteria Lane. Beverly, a housewife played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, is certainly desperate enough. This evening she is hosting a small neighborhood gathering that isn’t so much a party as it is a ruse to assemble a combination audience/collection of victims. Beverly bosses and cajoles and whines and ignores and bullies and ... read more yammers at everyone who comes within earshot – all the while pushing drinks and unappetizing snacks on her guests: new residents Tony and Angela, and recently-divorced Sue, whose daughter Abigail is having the only real party happening that night. The title deliberately misleads us – all the fun is offstage.
And in the audience – because even though none of the characters appear to really enjoy themselves (especially Beverly’s real estate agent husband, Laurence), the play delivers a lot of laughs. Many of the funniest bits are tinged with schadenfreude, as we watch characters’ baser natures rise to the surface when Beverly stretches out her harpy’s wings.
Beverly pushes the liquor hard, and the inhibitions start dropping. Of course, these are British inhibitions we’re talking about, so it takes a lot of drinks to get them to drop any appreciable distance. I was put in mind of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff,” with the older couple hosting a younger couple, drinks being consumed in rapid succession, old resentments rising to the surface…
Although there are only a few minor references in the text that tie the show to any specific era and my guess is that on the first page of the play it says “Time: The Present,” director Scott Elliott has taken “present” to mean the 1977 of the play’s first production. The set is a spot-on rendition of what one might find in a 70s issue of “Better Homes & Gardens.” Kudos to Derek McLane for an elegant use of space, with a unified view of the home – giving Elliott the ability to stage action in the living room, the kitchen just upstage of it and the interior hallway and entry left and right.
The performances are quite good, especially the wonderful Lisa Emery. Jennifer Jason Leigh was entertaining, but I always saw an actress playing a role, not a character experiencing life. That’s too bad, because Beverly is the shriveled little heart of this play.
The edge explored here is the one between self-esteem and self-loathing. Beverly is proud that she has caught herself a successful man, and can afford to spend her days drinking and smoking and putting cheese cubes on toothpicks and sticking them into grapefruit halves turned upside down on a plate as a serving technique. But she’s so deeply insecure that she needs to show off her possessions to remind herself how worthy she must be, and bully her guests to prove to herself that her way is the right way. She ends up vacillating between preening and pouncing and her guests never get to feel comfortable. Fortunately, Leigh’s text and Elliott’s direction succeed in making Beverly a character who, while pathetically self-centered, is actually quite entertaining. |
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