Owen was too full of a head-cold to come to the theatre with me tonight but luckily Andrew was free to accompany me to the Donmar to see Michael Grandage's excellent revival of Enid Bagnold's 1955 play THE CHALK GARDEN.

My only knowledge of it was that Hayley Mills & Deborah Kerr were in the 1964 film version and that Sophie Thompson had appeared as Laurel in a regional revival in the 1980s so it was great to watch this 50 year old play with no idea of what was going to happen. What did happen was an excellent production, in a play that was both gripping and funny that boasted two stand-out lead performances.

Mrs. St. Maugham (the majestic Margaret Tyzack) is living with her grand-daughter Laurel (Felicity Jones) in a lonely country house where the girl lives unsupervised and allowed to indulge her penchant for starting fires in the garden. Apart from her doting and indulgent grandmother the girl's only companion is Maitland (Jamie Glover) the young manservant left jumpy and highly-strung due to his time in prison as a conscientious objector during the war. These three inhabitants are ruled by the offstage commands of an old family butler, still running the house although dying in an upstairs room.

Into this anarchic household Mrs. St. Maugham decides to bring in a ladies companion for Laurel. In true Mary Poppins fashion, the other applicants drift away leaving just Miss Madrigal (Penelope Wilton). She is aloof and strangely resistant to being employed until she sees Mrs. St. Maugham's dying flowers in her garden growing in the chalky soil and decides to tend both garden and grand-daughter. Amazingly the possibly clumping imagery of the garden here is lightly done.

Madrigal transforms the house and it's inhabitants until one day a visit from an old friend of Mrs. St. Maugham's cracks Madrigal's controlled exterior and a subsequent visit from Laurel's long-estranged mother results in a final battle over the girl's future. And whose side is Miss Madrigal on?

The play grips from the get-go, strangely alternating between drawing room comedy and poetic drama and it is baffling why this is it's first West End revival in thirty years. Michael Grandage directs the varying shifts in atmosphere expertly, in less nuanced hands I can imagine the play lurching from mood to mood but here the play flows smoothly.
The cast rise to the challenge of this haunting play. Jamie Glover has great fun as Maitland, the young, slightly odd ex-convict working as the manservant who is Laurel's only outlet for friendship while Felicity Jones is excellent as Laurel, the willful girl taken to live with her indulgent grandmother when her mother remarries. Headstrong and outspoken, she gave a standout performance, especially considering the actresses she shares most of her scenes with.

Much of the success of the production is thanks to the extraordinary performances of Penelope Wilton & Margaret Tyzack.
I am not sure how she manages it but Penelope Wilton gets better with each production. As Miss Madrigal she is a total enigma, as feisty and quick to answer back as her teenage charge but never once losing the sense of isolation and almost strait-jacked by a bodily tension, as if at any moment she will break out. Even when Miss Madrigal allows herself the luxury of a smile it ebbs away quickly. Just watch her in the scene when Laurel is questioning Mrs. St. Maugham's friend (Clifford Rose) over lunch, as the girl edges closer to Madrigal's secret you cannot take your eyes off her - you can almost feel the tension in her body as she stares into the mid-distance. In the original London production the role was played by Peggy Ashcroft, in my opinion Wilton is edging up to that level of excellence.

Margaret Tyzack was quite simply astonishing as the redoubtable Mrs St. Maugham. From a solid Raj background she appears unassailable, the personification of the Middle England Upper Class, such as when she hires Miss Madrigal without references because to ask for them means "you are unsure of your own convictions". She is forgiving of the outlandish actions of her grand-daughter and intrigued by the blank canvas of Miss Madrigal. However when her daughter (Suzanne Burdan) arrives to reclaim Laurel she turns into a lioness, fighting her corner with a palpable anger. However Tyzack's excellence is in showing that her character's Raj-bred bravado covers a loneliness as palpable as Madrigal's and Laurel's.

THE CHALK GARDEN opened the same year as John Osbourne's LOOK BACK IN ANGER - I know which one I would rather see again. Fingers crossed for a swift West End transfer as the Donmar run is sold out.