SUMMER AND SMOKE at the Almeida Theatre - Body and Soul...

Playwright Tennessee Williams' golden years can be bracketed between 1944 with the astonishing success of THE GLASS MENAGERIE, and the 1963 critical and commercial failure of THE MILK TRAIN DOESN'T STOP HERE ANYMORE - twelve plays in nineteen years which challenged the American theatre to look again at the way those of 'the fugitive kind' survive the cruelties of life and love.

Of those twelve main plays, there are only two I have not yet seen: CAMINO REAL (1953) and PERIOD OF ADJUSTMENT (1960) - a rare Williams comedy - because, thanks to the Almeida Theatre, I can now add SUMMER AND SMOKE to my 'seen' list.

SUMMER AND SMOKE premiered on Broadway in 1948, a year after A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, but only ran three months, STREETCAR ran for two years!  It was directed by Margo Jones, who had made a name for herself in US regional theatre and been an exponent of theatre-in-the-round.  She had co-directed the original production of THE GLASS MENAGERIE and she lobbied for the director role on SUMMER AND SMOKE.  However the rehearsal period was very troubled resulting in Williams and the cast losing all faith in her.

Off-Broadway director José Quintero staged a revival in 1952 at the Circle In The Square which was well-received and launched the career of actress Geraldine Page: she won a Drama Desk award and, when she recreated her role in the 1961 film version, was nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award.  Williams' returned to the story in 1964, rewriting it as THE ECCENTRICITIES OF A NIGHTINGALE but by the time it was staged in the 1970s, Williams was out of fashion and it ran 20 performances.  Amazingly SUMMER AND SMOKE took nearly sixty years to reach London but it only ran for 6 weeks in the West End, unsurprising with the glacial Rosamund Pike in the lead.

But 12 years later, SUMMER AND SMOKE has reappeared at the Almeida Theatre in a re-imagined production which initially threw me but by the interval I was totally hooked.  Director Rebecca Frecknall has come over all Ivo van Hove and has designer Tom Scutt impose an idiosyncratic visual look to Wiliams' play set in pre-1916 Mississippi but the totally stripped-down playing area distills the action to just the actor and the words; the only furniture are nine stand-up pianos that line up in a semi-circle at the back of the stage with their hardback chairs.

Alma Winemiller lives in the incongruously-named small town of Glorious Hill, the highly-strung daughter of the town's straight-laced minister and his demented wife.  She has grown up across the street from John Buchanan, the virile son of the town doctor, and her unrequited passion for him has been unwavering since school when she embarrassed him with a present of handkerchiefs.  Alma's neurasthenia leads her to have breathless palpitations which means she visits the doctor at all hours but Alma and John, while on friendly terms, cannot give each other what they need.  

Alma, a music teacher who holds raggedy literary 'salons', seeks a spiritual connection - she delights in telling everyone she meets that Alma is Spanish for 'soul' - but John is bored with his medical studies and wants life and excitement which he finds regularly in the Latino quarter outside town, especially at the casino on Moon Lake owned by Pablo Gonzales whose daughter Rosa he is involved with.  Alma's choking primness and nervous mannerisms cannot compete with Rosa's lush sensuality and, after a disastrous date at the casino, the die is cast for them.

Dr. Buchanan leaves to help with an outbreak of fever so John throws a wild party at the surgery to celebrate his engagement to Rosa; a jealous Alma contacts his father who returns to angrily confront the drunken Pablo who draws a gun...  an event that leads to Alma collapsing physically and mentally.  By the time she recovers, the momentous summer is over and life has changed forever: John has taken over his father's work, has renounced his former ways and is engaged to Nellie, one of Alma's singing pupils.  Alma realizes that her former attitudes have made her miss out on engaging with life and love:

'The girl who said 'no' — she doesn't exist anymore, she died last summer — suffocated in smoke from something on fire inside her.'

By stripping the action of all distractions, director Rebecca Frecknall draws you into the lives of John and, in particular, Alma and, while she cannot make much of Williams' 2nd Act melodramatic plot turn, she elicits strong performances from her cast of eight - I didn't even mind the Director Theatre shtick of the cast plonking the pianos for atmosphere...  Frecknall made the scenes between Alma and John crackle with tension, in particular the Act 1 scene where he listened to her heartbeat then held her wrist to check her pulse was played to a silence from the audience, gripped by the action.

There are some standout performances: Anjana Vasan was vibrant playing the contrasting roles of Rosa and Nellie, Nancy Crane was good as Alma's deranged mother as well as the gossipy Mrs. Bassett, and Seb Carrington was particularly good as Archie Kramer, the lonely travelling salesman who Alma meets in the darkening town park under the statue of the angel; an ending which is left nicely ambiguous... will it lead to Alma engaging in life positively or negatively?

Matthew Needham played the role of John well, you suspect that Williams wrote a sounding-board for Alma to be play against than a fully-rounded character but Needham showed both the reckless side of the bored medical student as well as the chastened older John who assumes responsibility with his father's death.

But the play belongs to the actress who plays Alma and Patsy Ferran is inspired casting.  Her slightly 'other' quality works in her favour here; you totally believe that her Alma is unable to fit in to the straightened society of Glorious Hill and the weight of her repressed home life is excellently suggested.  Ferran's quality of stillness here illuminates her character and she negotiates Alma's journey well, despite Williams' tendency to overdo Alma's misfit itchiness.  Ferran starts the play with an extended asthma-style panic attack which really pitches you into the character - as well as being an endurance test for her right at the top of the show.

Alma sits interestingly between two of Williams' previous characters: the over-protected and shy Laura from THE GLASS MENAGERIE and the neurotic gentility of STREETCAR's Blanche - another teacher who has embraced life too dangerously.

Although the play is not the best of Williams' canon - the obvious repetition of the soul (Alma) and the body (John) begin to clang after a while - I am so glad to have finally see it in a production which shows it off to it's fullest potential.

THE DEEP BLUE SEA at the Lyttelton Theatre - Helen McCrory's turn to dive in...

Peggy Ashcroft, Vivien Leigh, Penelope Keith, Penelope Wilton, Harriet Walter, Greta Scaachi, Rachel Weisz... quite a line-up eh?  Now Helen McCrory can be added to that list as she is the latest actress to play the desperate Hester Collyer in Terence Rattigan's masterpiece THE DEEP BLUE SEA which is now revived by Carrie Cracknell at the Lyttelton.

What makes this play Rattigan's masterpiece?  I think because this play more than any other seemed to spring directly from a moment in his life.  Rattigan, a closeted homosexual, had been in a relationship with a young actor Kenneth Morgan in the 1940s who decided to end the relationship, frustrated by his life in the shadows of Rattigan's world.  After a subsequent relationship failed, a distraught Morgan gassed himself.

Three years later and after much revising, THE DEEP BLUE SEA opened in the West End with Peggy Ashcroft as Hester, Kenneth More as her lover Freddie Page and Roland Culver as her estranged husband Sir William Collyer.  Watching the play again, it is remarkable how Rattigan - despite his relationship with Morgan - manages to balance out empathy among these characters and not make it all stacked up in Hester's corner.

West London, 1950s: Hester Collyer is found by her neighbours and landlady lying in front of her living-room gas fire, saved by the fact that the gas meter ran out of money.  Another neighbour who has vague medical experience deals with her ingestion of sleeping pills but what drove her to this, at the time, criminal act of Attempted Suicide?  Over the course of the day we discover that Hester has been driven to despair by the knowledge that her lover Freddie is falling out of love with her.

Hester left a safe, middle-class life as the wife of High Court judge Sir William Collyer soon after meeting the dashing, young WWII test pilot Freddie Page.  Freddie gave Hester the sexual fulfillment she never had with Sir William but, with work becoming increasingly hard due to his drinking, Freddie is tiring of Hester's emotional needs and when he decides to stay at a golfing event rather than return to celebrate her birthday Hester decides to choose "The Deep Blue Sea".

When Freddie returns Hester tries to cover up her actions but when he discovers her suicide note he responds angrily that he can no longer live like this and leaves.  An increasingly desperate Hester discovers he has been given a job offer in South America and attempts to manoeuvre him to return so she can win him back.

Instead she is visited twice by Sir William who, against all odds, offers her the possibility of returning to their married life together but Hester has grown emotionally away from him and ultimately it's Miller, the secretive neighbour with a medical past who provides Hester with a suggestion of renewal.

Carrie Cracknell's stays clear of any revisionist tricks - although the production has a superfluous 'auralscape' which groans and rumbles away as if Hester's West London boarding house will collapse at any minute, it's such a redundant addition.  Other than that production stumble, Cracknell does well in suggesting the quiet desperation in the lives of all the tenants in Mrs Elton's boarding house, not just Hester and Miller but also in the Welchs, a young married couple who are already showing hairline fractures in their life together.

Tom Scutt's boarding-house set has translucent walls which allow you to see the neighbour's comings and goings and shut-in lives which certainly suggests the secrets that Hester is faced with keeping - her unmarried life with Freddie and the hushed-up suicide attempt.  It's problem is that Hester and Freddie's flat is hardly the dingy one that Rattigan envisioned Hester trapped in alone.

At times I felt the production was a bit under-powered in it's male casting.  In the important role of Freddie Tom Burke could certainly do the "surly teenager" behaviour of Hester's lover but I didn't believe for a minute that this man would inspire grand passion in anyone, no matter how good he was in bed.

I also felt Nick Fletcher was too lightweight for the shadowy Mr Miler.  It is slowly revealed that Miller has served time in prison which has resulted in him losing the right to practise medicine and his brusque exterior hides someone who feels just as ostracized as Hester and it is he who plants the vital thought of how she can get through her pain.  It's a great part but here Fletcher seemed to just shine it on.

Much better was Peter Sullivan as Hester's estranged husband Sir William, played younger here than usual.  Collyer is not a bad man, he just cannot give Hester what she now has experienced with Freddie and despite his suggesting that the door is still open for her at the family home, he knows that his safe and mundane life will go on without her and Sullivan captured this perfectly.

There is nice support too from Marion Bailey as the genial landlady Mrs Elton and Yolanda Kettle as the newly-married neighbour Ann, a potential Hester-like wife who pines for her frequently absent husband.

But of course any production of THE DEEP BLUE SEA needs an actress at the top of her game and Helen McCrory gives a performance of nerve-shredding anxiety.  Over the course of the play's single day setting we see Hester defeated, cowed, cunning, loving, distraught but finally... herself.  On paper she can seem a silly, over-emotional woman so you need an actress who is willing to go all the way off the scale to make her situation real and McCrory does just that.  Even though I know the play she still had me wondering how she could come back from the edge of disaster.

It's a talk with Mr Miller who starts the rebirth of Hester followed by a resigned last meeting with Freddie and Helen McCrory was sensational in this last beautifully-written section of the play, as the parting lovers skirt over the undertow of pain in their parting with niceties and attempts to be 'decent' about things.  In the silent last moments of the play, McCrory was magnetic... who else could make cooking a scrambled egg so absorbing? Again, magnificent McCrory makes a role all her own.

LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES at the Donmar: Love and Death...

It had to come... my last theatre visit of 2015.  But what a way to end it with the chance to see one of my favourite plays for the first time since 1990, Christopher Hampton's dazzlingly decadent LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES from the novel by Choderlos de Laclos.

In 1987, four years after falling under the spell of Christopher Hampton's writing with Peter Gill's wonderful production of TALES FROM HOLLYWOOD at the National Theatre, I managed to see his latest hit LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES at the Ambassadors Theatre where it had transferred from The Pit Theatre at the Barbican.  I had missed the original cast of Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan but saw Jonathan Hyde and Eleanor David, the latter giving a performance that was glitteringly lethal.

I saw it with my late friend Martin Taylor and indeed, the more cutting of the Marquise de Merteuil's lines soon found their way into our shared badinage and, sitting in the Donmar betwixt Christmas and the New Year that will mark the 20th anniversary of Martin's death, those lines made me smile all over again.  Sometimes being overly-familiar with a play can be a bad thing but it was a deep pleasure to see the play where it belongs, on an intimate stage.

Laclos' epistolary novel - his one, lasting success - was written seven years before the French Revolution and can be viewed as a devastating critique of the hedonistic society that was to lose it's collective head a few years hence but we will never know for certain.  Laclos' was a military man and you can see his knowledge of strategies and warfare in his tale of two scheming aristocrats who delight in plotting revenge on ex-lovers.

The novel has been adapted for stage and screen in various guises and Hampton's play was the basis of the most well-known film DANGEROUS LIAISONS for which he won an Academy Award for his adapted script.  However the play exerts a particular power onstage and one sits entranced as the conspirators Valmont and Mertueil circle their prey and ultimately each other.  For me it is the perfect play, well-constructed with it's own inner engine, dizzying wordplay and moments of genuine suspense and pathos.

Hampton's delicious trick is to make the audience side with Valmont and Merteuil in their plots - Merteuil wants Valmont to seduce the teenage soon-to-be bride of an ex-lover while Valmont wishes to seduce a married woman famous for her fidelity and piety.  Although reluctant to act on Merteuil's plan, when Valmont learns that the young girl's mother has been bad-mouthing him to his married prey he takes agrees to Merteuil's challenge.

Of course Valmont triumphs in both cases but he leaves himself exposed when Merteuil realises that in the process of seducing Madame de Tourvel he has committed the cardinal sin of falling in love.  Above all else, this means she is no longer the sole object of his desire.  Inch by inch, Hampton pulls the carpet from under the audience's feet as we realise our hero and heroine do real damage to those they prey on and morally the audience is left hanging.

Tom Scutt's design of a grand salon going to the bad - plaster peeling, gilt tarnished, large paintings left unhung - was an interesting metaphor for the society the conspirators embody, and it was warmly lit by Michael Henderson's lighting.  Josie Rourke's production fitted the Donmar space perfectly, if I have a quibble about her direction it is that she has Janet McTeer play Merteuil from the get-go almost like a panto Wicked Queen - all snaking fingers and glaring eyes - oh for Eleanor David's cool, mocking demeanor - but she pulls it back so by the time she turns the tables on Valmont she truly is a fearsome opponent who will win whatever the price.

Dominic West certainly has the right devil-may-care approach to Valmont and, like McTeer, he too rose to the fire and anger of the final scenes well, meeting the knowledge that Merteuil had tricked him into losing everything with a knowing inevitability.  It's just a shame he stumbled over the odd line once too often for it not to be noticeable.

A late replacement for Michelle Dockery, Elaine Cassidy succeeded in the tricky task of making Madame de Tourvel sympathetic and the supporting cast excelled with fine performances from Morfydd Clark as the teenage victim Cécile, Una Stubbs as Valmont's loving aunt, Jennifer Saayeng as the saucy courtesan Émilie and Edward Holcroft was a suitably gauche Chevalier Danceny.

With no news of a West End transfer yet, it is good that this excellent production will be broadcast as part of the NT Live project to selected cinemas on 28th January - click the ad to see if there is a screening at a cinema near you.

"Terrible things breed in broken hearts..."

People with any kind of breathing problems are advised to keep well clear of the Olivier Theatre on certain days until the start of September... their current production of Euripides' MEDEA might just finish you off.  It's rare to see a production of such brutal, in-your-face force that for a long time after I was still poleaxed.

At the climax of this intense production you could hear absolutely nothing in the auditorium, which believe me is rare in the coughing wards that pass for theatres these days and also a fine tribute to director Carrie Cracknell ratcheting up of the tension.

I have only seen the play twice before: the first was Pasolini's 1969 film version with Maria Callas in imperious form in her only non-operatic acting role and I saw Diana Rigg's award-winning turn at the Wyndhams in 1993.  However neither were as visceral as Cracknell's production.

On reflection, it's remarkable how few of the acknowledged great actresses have taken on this all-encompassing role - very odd.  Luckily Helen McCrory said yes when Cracknell asked her and she is giving a towering performance as Euripides' heroine.  Ah but is she a heroine? You have to decide.

Medea is the wife of Jason who managed to steal the Golden Fleece only after she provided the distraction of murdering her brother, something that would make most men think twice about marrying her but Jason does on his return to Corinth and they have two children.

However Euripedes' play - here in a pared-to-the-bone version by Ben Power - starts with Medea in shock having learnt that Jason is to marry the daughter of King Creon that day.  Creon visits her and tells her she is to be exiled, her children taken from her and given to Jason.  She hysterically begs for just one day before this is done which Creon and Jason reluctantly allow her.  In her despair she is visited by King Aegeus of Athens who has visited the nearby Oracle of Delphi to ask will he remain childless.  Medea tells him she can cure this by magic if he will allow her to live in Athens which he readily agrees to.

Having secured somewhere to live, Medea can now exact her terrifying revenge on Jason and Creon.  She has her children deliver a present to the wedding feast of a beautiful gown for the new bride to wear - only we know that Medea has soaked the dress in a sulphurous poison that will destroy whoever touches it.  Soon she hears that the bride was burnt to death along with Creon when he tried to tear it from his daughter's body and now Medea is ready for the horrific coup-de-grace to punish Jason- to kill their children.

As I said earlier, Helen McCrory is spellbinding as the desperate Medea.  This is no statuesque 'diva' performance, McCrory's Medea is visceral, frantic, driven, almost possessed by her fury.  The moments leading up to her killing her children were mesmerising as the balance of her mind went from mercy to murder, sometimes within seconds of each other.  If she was not before, this performance puts her at the top table.

Cracknell also elicits strong performances from Danny Sapani as the proud, unthinking Jason and Martin Turner as a cold-hearted Creon, embodying a heartless patriarchal ruler.  There is an interesting performance from Michaela Coel as the children's nurse, her sing-song delivery at first odd but then making for a naturalistic, non-showy, performance.

 

There is interesting use of the chorus, first seen as guests at the wedding who then are dotted around the stage watching the unfolding action, doing the usual chorus thing of saying "I wouldn't do that if I were you" then later saying "I told you not to do that".  My heart sank when at the climax of the piece they suddenly lapse into the usual anachronistic modern dance steps - nothing illustrates the depths of hatred and revenge than kicking your leg out and whirling around.  I was reminded of Miss Nicola Blackman calling such segments "ten dancers looking for the toilet with the light out". 

As I have said Carrie Cracknell's direction grips like a vice, there is nothing - apart from said modern dance routine - to distract from the relentless drive to Medea's triumph over the expectations of her role in life.  Ben Power's translation hasn't an inch of spare meat on it either.  I was surprised that the ending does not make it as clear as in the original that Medea is leaving to fly to Athens and freedom with her heavy load, here she just trudges off but I guess it wouldn't fit with the general mood of this particular production.

Tom Scutt's large set at first seemed like a run-down middle eastern hotel foyer but it becomes more interesting with the reveals of an upper function room to illustrate Jason's wedding reception and a creepy, misty and dense forest in the back.  I thought it interesting that the choice was made to show the usual offstage marriage of Jason but Medea's murderous acts are still judged to be experienced offstage.

Lucy Carter's brutal lighting again focuses the attention totally on the action and I was surprised how effective the sonic beats score by Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory was, made all the more effective by bearing used sparingly.

The production is now sold out until the end of it's run in early September - is it me or are productions getting shorter and shorter runs at the National? - but there are still seats available on the day as well as the now-obligatory NT Live cinema showing, this will be filmed live interestingly on the production's last night.

MEDEA however - and McCrory's searing performance - are best experienced live and in the Olivier auditorium.

Revivalists

Two productions have recently given me the chance to reappraise two works that I had seen before, one on stage and one on film.

I saw THE WEIR in 1999 when it had already been running for nearly two years in various theatres that had been commandeered by the Royal Court while it was being renovated,  It won the Olivier Award for Best Play and has since been named as one of the 100 Most Significant Plays of the 20th Century - it shared the 40th place with Beckett's ENDGAME, Coward's THE VORTEX, Miller's VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE and O'Neill's THE ICEMAN COMETH.  Heady competition for a relatively recent work.

To be honest, for all it's acclaim I had retained only a dim memory of the play.  I remembered the Irish backwater pub setting and it's story of the male locals telling spooky stories to a female newcomer from Dublin.

But here it is revived in a vibrant new production directed by Josie Rourke that originated at the Donmar (and ergo, sold out immediately) and has now transferred to the Wyndhams and it was a pleasure to be reacquainted with it's dense, naturalistic prose and this one has stayed with me.

Tom Scutt's set design places us firmly in the small pub in a remote village in Ireland, we even get the waft of peat burning in the onstage stove,  Brendan runs the pub although you can tell his heart isn't really in it and he is being pressured by his offstage sisters who have invested in it,  His regulars include Jack who runs the town's garage, Jim who is an odd-job man who lives with his aged mother and Finbar who is viewed with some suspicion by the others as he owns property and is a bit 'flash'.  Finbar is also the odd-one-out among them as he is the only one who is married.

The play's first third sets up Finbar's arrival with his new tenant Valerie, a young woman who has just arrived in the village from Dublin.  Her presence in the bar has a vaguely unsettling effect on the regulars, straining to be on their best behaviour and adapting to her 'cosmopolitan' ways - her request for a glass of wine throws Brendan completely but luckily he has a bottle in his adjoining house which was given to him as a present!  One wonders how long the wine has sat in his cupboard as he pours Valerie a beer glass full of it.

They all attempt to trump Finbar's local knowledge with stories of their youth and the characters that are long gone, including the old woman who used to live in Valerie's house.  This leads to Jack recounting a spooky story that the old woman told him from when she was a girl which leads to Finbar and Jim also sharing similar ghostly tales that they were involved in. 

These scenes could stop the show in a bad way but Josie Rourke has by this point created a real world onstage with the cast playing as if they really have known each other all their lives.  These stories have an effect on Valerie and she tells the men her own experience that has lead her to the village.  Her haunting story has a radical effect on the men and at the close of the play Jack shares a story from his past that has no supernatural overtones but which has haunted his life ever after.

A remarkable ensemble cast is lead by Brian Cox as Jack, his black suit looking suitably lived-in. I suspect his performance has grown somewhat larger since the move as his bits of business seemed to be very spotlighted but his performance grows richer during the course of the play and his final monologue was wonderfully played, making you fully realise the loneliness that lives behind his blarney.

Ardol O'Hanlon was very interestingly cast, Jim being very close to his slightly daft television persona but he too managed to show the aching loneliness in his aimless life, again his baggy jumper suggesting character.  Risteárd Cooper had the showy role as jack-the-lad Finbar and he too gave us a fully-rounded character, chafing at his marital ties and all too aware of his friends wariness about him.

Peter McDonald was always watchable as Brendan, he suggests a life in the doldrums, of opening and closing his pub every night while hearing the same stories time and again.  The undercurrent between him and Dervla Kirwan's Valerie was nicely played, you hope that her arrival might give them both a new chance.  Kirwan was excellent as the woman fleeing her recent trauma and her big monologue was beautifully played, holding the emotions in check until the end.  As usual, Neil Austin's lighting was impeccable.

It's a wonderful experience to see this cast playing with such a unity of purpose and I recommend you race to see it before it's April 19th final curtain.  And yes, it does deserve it's place on the that list of great 20th Century plays.

Also on the Significant Plays of the 20th Century list - this time at number 50 along with 8 other plays - is Shelagh Delaney's A TASTE OF HONEY which has just been revived at the Lyttelton Theatre.

I have only ever seen Tony Richardson's 1961 film version which immortalised Rita Tushingham as Jo, the fantasising and gobby schoolgirl, yearning to break away from her overbearing mother and that film certainly casts a long shadow as it is so of it's time and it's trops seem fresh and original.

The play, which like THE WEIR only requires five performers, was Delaney's only real success.  In an excellent piece in the programme, Jeanette Winterson puts her in the context of her times and shows how, as a teenager of 19 when the play was finally produced, Delaney was a unique but lonely voice with no other female writer around her to bounce ideas off.  She had been spurred on to write A TASTE OF HONEY after enduring a production of a Terence Rattigan play and decided that she could write about life better than this writer could - to paraphrase Delaney fan Morrissey it said nothing to her about her life.  She wrote the play in a fortnight and sent it to Joan Littlewood at Theatre Royal Stratford East who seized on it's immediacy and put it into production.

Teenage Jo and her flighty mother Helen have moved into a rundown flat in a dingy part of Salford in the late 1950s after having done a flit from their last home.  With no money coming in apart from what Helen gets from her 'admirers', Jo is looking forward to leaving school and starting work in a shop.  She is also seeking escape from her mother who treats her as her unpaid servant but you also sense that their life together has made them inter-dependant and that Jo will probably never really escape,

Helen starts up with the flashy Peter who asks her to marry him.  What she doesn't realise is that Jo has started her first relationship with Jimmie, a young black sailor who is soon to depart on a new ship.  Left alone over Christmas when her mother leaves her to be with her new lover, Jo invites the sailor over and they have sex.  A couple of days later, while dressing on her wedding day, Helen notices Jo wearing Jimmie's ring on a chain around her neck,  They quarrel and Helen leaves the house, possibly for the last time.

A few months later and Jo is pregnant.  She meets art student Geoff (whose homosexuality is only inferred) who is looking for somewhere to stay, and invites him to share the flat.  He needs a place to stay and she needs a friend and someone to share her life with.  Together they look forward to the birth of her baby and plan for their unconventional life together, although not before an ominous visit from Helen, tipped off by the well-meaning Geoff about her daughter's condition.

In the months nearer the birth Geoff is coping with Jo's erratic behaviour well but all is interrupted when Helen reappears, her marriage apparently over before it began.  Helen immediately starts undermining Peter and while Jo sleeps, he realises he is out of his depth with the fearsome mother and leaves for good.  Helen's triumph is short-lived when she realises Jo's child might be black and leaves while Jo starts her labour, waiting for Geoff's return which we know will never happen.

I really wish I liked the production more but I found Bijan Sheibani's direction to be erratic and a bit all over the place.  What totally ruined most of the show were the profoundly irritating scene changes which has cast members doing little dance routines around the set to the cool jazz music playing.  It put me in mind of those fist-making routines that end Miranda Hart's tv shows and *no one* wants to be reminded of that.  Hildegarde Bechtler's design doesn't really inspire either with it's single-room set seemingly up on bricks over at one side of the stage with a Salford street cyclorama behind it.

I also found Kate O'Flynn to be too strident as Jo, seemingly playing her character like an audition for "Coronation Street".  It made it very difficult to like or sympathise with her character at all.  In her first scene with Jimmie the sailor she hit the right level of gaucheness, saying phrases in a style you knew she had seen in films or heard her mother using, but overall her high-pitched, over-pitched phrasing annoyed.

I did like Harry Hepple as Geoff who suggested an inner life that needed nurturing as much as Jo's did but doomed to be confronted by the prejudices of landladies, bigots and harridans.  His crushed acceptance of being no match for the manipulative Helen was touchingly played,

The show however belongs to Lesley Sharp as Helen.  Changeable as a Salford breeze, she was infuriating but intriguing - yes she was a monster but she also gave clues along the way to what made her that way.  A crippling loneliness and need to be loved has driven her to manipulation and emotional blackmail and the action noticeably sagged when she was offstage.

At times she reminded me of Ruth Ellis, with her tight clothes, love of the bottle and peroxide blonde hair - maybe it's because I had in the back of my mind that Shelagh Delaney had a success in the 1980s with her script for DANCE WITH A STRANGER,

I wish I had liked it more but sadly the combination of iffy direction and an original work being made to seem unoriginal by a production trading on what has come after it made it a missed opportunity.