Rebecca Banatvala (foreground). Photo credit: Harry Eddison.
Simon Jenner, October 24th 2024
Ali Smith’s a writer who might always outstrip any imaginary forces trying to turn her fiction into anything else. Her 2016 Autumn – first of what turned into a tetralogy – might hold the record speed for turning current events into a major novel too: Brexit’s June vote and outfall was a major theme: yet Autumn was out by October.
Enter adaptor Harry McDonald whose Foam at Finborough about the true history of a gay Nazi skinhead won plaudits in April, and you might have the dream imaginary force. Directed by Charlotte Vickers at Park Theatre till November 2nd it proves compelling, then quixotic.
McDonald has taken the novel by its kaleidoscopic scruff so the opening, a dream of a 101-year-old man in increasingly long sleep patterns, pops up two-thirds of the way through. This makes absolute sense as McDonald‘s familiarity with the novel’s themes of individual kindness, and witness against increasingly nasty isolationism percolate through in a radiance clouded by English temper.
So it’s right to begin with 32-year-old Elisabeth (Rebecca Banatvala) recalling her strikingly direct11-year-old self, encountering neighbour Daniel Gluck (a sparkling puckish Gary Lilburn), over 70 years her senior. Now in 2016 Elisabeth’s had to swerve care-home authorities to visit him and read Great Expectations. She’s sure he can hear.
Rebecca Banatvala, Gary Lilburn. Photo credit: Harry Eddison.
Few hear her. Foisted on Daniel by her neglectful mother Wendy (Sophie Ward, fresh from her astonishing performance in The Silver Cord at Finborough) Elisabeth finds the father figure she lacks: but more, someone who feeds her intellectually. She ends up a precariously-salaried lecturer in art history (hello, Goldsmiths), and her subject Pauline Boty someone whom Hepworth-owning Daniel knew.
This adaptation obviously can’t replicate much of the sheer joy of Smith’s word-play, her puns, her lariat sequences of words morphing into other associations: but McDonald brings some of this in. Most of all he highlights the core relationship between Elisabeth and a man who never adverts to his surviving the previous century when many family members didn’t.
Yet they’re talking only through his sleep, and in dreams Daniel’s sister calling him ‘Summer brother’ (one of Nancy Crane’s gentler avatars) echoes what Elisabeth might feel about him, aged as he is.
Banatvala and Lilburn often seem airborne as they dance their relationship through their early friendship and Banatvala echoes this with the prone Lilburn.
Elisabeth has had to leap new hurdles though to get this far: the paradox of getting passport-driven access to a former refugee is laden with irony. Nancy Crane sparkles too in a variety of nasty official figures, notably the truculent, half-joking, half-tripwiring Post Office official, telling Elisabeth her name is spelt exotically; and her face is the wrong size. Elisabeth needs it to visit Daniel, but ultimately dodges officialdom pretending to be a granddaughter. (but what about Daniel’s expiring bank balance, the authorities ask? There’s a brilliant pay-off) Her passport arrives though she hardly needs it.
Sophie Ward, Nancy Crane,. Photo credit: Hary Eddison
Crane’s not only the menacing border-guard to a detainees’ camp, barring local access, but finally the radiant Joey, child film star turned Wendy’s lover, and companion as Wendy too finds her voice as refugee activist. McDonald adroitly places Daniel’s opening meditation here as he sees rows of bodies washed up on the beach, and in the opposite direction, sunbathers.
At this point a climbing frame right of the Park 90 stage is highlighted with Ward’s protesting Wendy; this poses a paradox for set and costume designer Grace Venning. Till now an minimal backdrop of autumn leaves and furniture entrancingly covered with plastic like a ream till removed, has furnished part of the minimal unfussy landscape. Imagination works best uncluttered, but as the second half of this 100 minutes straight through falters, you increasingly miss some meta-narrative a more dynamic set would offer.
Whilst Crane and Ward strike the warmest new note in this tender late blossoming of Elisabeth’s mother, Elisabeth herself dives in with Banatvala donning a blonde wig. She inhabits the life of her dissed dissertation: Pauline Boty, Daniel’s Sixties pop-artist friend. Boty managed to penetrate the macho Boyzone and is recurringly rediscovered and lost.
Crane as ethereal disdainful supervisor is no help, wafting through in scarves, and though this is a major theme it’s established too late and sends the play into rescue-mission-drift. We revisit the importance of photographs, including Christine Keeler on a chair, but by (understandably) shifting Daniel’s opening paragraphs, these themes now feel tacked on.
This is a still partially bewitching production and it might send you back to the novel or quartet (as it has me). Ward and Crane are both tender and revelatory together and irradiate the ending. Banatvala is superb throughout, with Lilburn’s Ariel-like guidance absorbing and touching. The Tempest is indeed referenced here, with Cymbeline a major theme in Smith’s sequent Winter. There is though a pay-off. It’s worth seeing for that too.
Based on the novel by Ali Smith, Adapted by Harry McDonald, Director Charlotte Vickers, Set and Costume Designer Grace Venning, Lighting Designer Ali Hunter, Sound Designer Jamie Lu,
Stage Manager Rose Hockaday, Production Manager Adam Jefferys, Producer Jessie Anand, Associate Producer Camille Koosyial, Marketing Cup of Ambition, PR Annabelle Mastin-Lee for Mobius Industries