When
I was a child, a young mother in my English town took her life when her lover
moved away. While experiencing this play, that captures the sublimity of perfect
love, I finally understood what depth of feeling might have driven her to it. To
adaptor & director Emma Rice, theater not only consists of language because,
as she demonstrates, love and longing are visceral; here is a roaring sea in
the mind, there a fall to the floor when approached by the beloved, all a visualization
of the swept-away feeling that overcomes lovers.
Coward’s
simple tale of two people meeting in a railroad tea shop in 1938 is transformed
into an exuberant ballet where various aspects of love – the forbidden, the carnal and the
adolescent – combine to show the passionate reality that love brings to mundane
daily life. All of this Rice accomplishes through musical numbers, film
projections and vaudeville turns by her brilliant multi-tasking performers.
The mostly British cast, many from the original Kneehigh
Theatre UK production, are headed by Hannah Yelland who, as Laura,
captures the stiff-upper-lip bravado of a gracious British housewife struggling
against a passion that might wreck her life; Jim Sturgeon as Alec is a decent
chap unable to resist the pull of a promised love; 
Annette McLaughlin as Myrtle
is a sassy broad with singing and dancing talent to spare; Joe Alessi plays her
lover Fred, a cheeky train dispatcher one moment, then Albert a solid understanding
husband; Dorothy Atkinson plays Beryl, a cheeky teenager, as well as a
loquacious grande dame, and Damon Daunno as Stanley is an eager beaver wanna-be
Romeo.
At
the Bram Goldsmith Theater, Annenberg Center, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills
through March 23. Tickets: Annenberg Box Office, phone 310-746-4000 or www.thewallis.org
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