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Reviews
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Suddenly Last SummerBy Tennessee Williams This has been an excellent week for actresses and it would be no great surprise if, come the end of the year, several of this crop win award nominations. Kathryn Hunter in Whistling Psyche, Kerry Fox in Cruel and Tender and Dame Diana Rigg as the manipulative, smothering mother, Mrs Venable in this production, will all richly deserve their plaudits.
However, unless something really special happens in the second half of the year, they will all have to stand aside on the big night. Victoria Hamilton's incredibly moving portrayal of the ill-used Catharine in Suddenly Last Summer is really special and will wring tears from even hardened cynics. In particular, she gives two speeches that grip the audience to such an extent that it feels as if collective breath is being held. For better or worse, this is very much director Michael Grandage's homage to Joseph Mankiewicz's 1959 film version as the leading ladies look uncannily like Katherine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor respectively. The atmospheric story itself is terribly powerful and moving, told with vividly shocking imagery. Mrs Venable is rather like Dr Frankenstein. Her son (Saint) Sebastian is never seen but is the true protagonist and he is the monster that she has created and defends with all of her diminishing strength. He is poet who writes an annual poem and otherwise is devoted to his mother and to the hedonistic homosexual lifestyle that ultimately brings about his doom. The play centres on the bloody battle between his protective mother and Catharine, who loves him more genuinely, over the truth of Sebastian's ending and thus the meaning of his life. Mark Bazeley gives good support to the two major actresses as the sinister, Aryan, lobotomist, Dr "Sugar" who, to his immense credit, becomes a good guy by the end. Even for the star struck, Michael Grandage's production values will make a profound impact. Christopher Oram's set is heavily symbolic, starting with the outside of The Drum, an area of solitary confinement (and almost torture) in a lunatic asylum. This opens into a jungle of a garden characterised by its carnivorous, triffid-like plants. Add in Howard Harrison's lighting that greatly helps the final dramatic crescendo as truth outs, Adam Cork's soundscape and an appropriately full and over-heated theatre and this becomes a very special theatrical evening. The combination of a good play, two excellent performances and a very exciting production should not be missed by anybody who loves theatre. This production was reviewed during its pre-West End national tour by Pete Wood (Malvern) and Peter Lathan (Newcastle).
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