HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1992-11-04, Page 23THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4,1992. PAGE 23.
Theatre review
‘Dining Room’ guests people worth knowing
By Keith Roulston
Since A. R. Gurney's The Dining
Room premiered in New York in
1982, it has become a favourite of
actors and it's little wonder, as evi
denced by the current production at
London's Grand Theatre.
Where else could William Hutt,
the sophisticated elder statesman of
Canadian theatre get to play a
naughty child again. Where else
can an actress be a forgetful grand
mother and a child at a birthday
party in the same play. -
In The Dining Room, a cast of six
gets to play hundreds of characters
of all ages and descriptions as gen
erations pass through a stately din
ing room, the kind only found in
upper middle class, tum-of-the-cen-
tury homes. Actually, it's not one
dining room but several, and Gur
ney uses the setting to tell the pass
ing history of the people who lived
that solid, WASPish way of life.
We get to see the passing of an era
through the use, and disuse, of the
formal dining room.
To pull from such a wide spec
trum of history takes a lot of versa
tility, both in the actors and in the
setting itself. Set designer Astrid
Janson has given the cast a breath-
takingly elegant set, yet one of sim
plicity. The dining room is made up
of a parquet floor on which sit a
dining room table and side board.
Forming ephemeral walls around
the dining room, however, are
sheer curtains that soar to the top of
the stage, enclosing it, yet leaving
the impression of make-believe that
is necessary for this series of stories
to be told. Onto the curtains are
projected light patterns that suggest
tall, leaded windows.
The cast portrays all the charac
ters with very little change of cos
tume, just a sweater here or a party
hat there. The scenes overlap, a
scene from one era of the dining
room overlapping with that of
another, sometimes with telling
results. In one scene, for instance, a
maid from a scene early in the cen
tury, is left on stage cleaning up the
dining room while a psychiatrist
from a 1980's scene discusses reno
vations with his architect. The
architect tries to convince him that
dining rooms are a thing of the
past, that the psychiatrist and his
wife will be eating in the kitchen
and the dining room can be cut up
to provide offices. In a few seconds
the changing patterns of life of the
professional class is summed up.
In another scene, William Hutt
plays an old grandparent whose
grandson comes to get money so he
can go to private school. The
grandfather is used to such
requests. Each grandchild has come
with requests before but he worries
that if the grandchildren are
indulging themselves, the kind of
entrepreneurial vigour he used to
pile up the family fortune will be
frittered away and the house will
end up being owned by some other,
younger go-getter with no family
connection.
The play is a series of such
vignettes showing snipits from the
lives of the people who lived the
Party time
It's party time in The Dining Room now playing at The Grand Theatre in London with a group of
unlikely children at the birthday party. Members of the cast include (left to right) Peter Hutt, Jan
Alexandra Smith, Brigitte Robinson, Jonathan Whittaker, William Hutt and Patricia Collins.-
photo by Robert C. Ragsdale
kind of lifestyle of formal dining
rooms
There's the birthday party scene
in which William Hutt and the
other older members of the cast get
to revert to their childhood while
Peter Hutt and Brigitte Robinson,
as parents of two of the neighbour
ing "children", play out a yearning
for each other, knowing the barriers
to their being together are great.
Many of the scenes are funny and
sad at the same time. In one scene a
family tries to have a normal
Thanksgiving dinner, but the matri
arch of the family, suffering from
alzheimer's, refuses to believe she
lives here and insists on being
taken "home" to her childhood
home. In an effort to connect with
her the three male members of the
family sing her one of her favourite
songs (getting carried away in the
process) and for a moment she
seems to connect, then slips back
into her imagination.
There's another scene that cap
tures the change of modem cus
toms as a bewildered father, whose
married daughter wants to bring the
kids and move back in, gets thor
oughly confused as she explains the
complicated conditions of her love
life.
The cast of the two Hutts, Ms
Robinson, Patricia Collins, Jan
Alexandra Smith and Jonathan
Whittaker is uniformly strong, giv
ing many memorable moments. Ms
WANTADS
All THE TIME!
Collins, for instance, has the audi
ence in stitches as an ancient ser
vant who continues to serve an old
master when someone obviously
should be serving her.
Grand Artistic Director Martha
Henry makes the action flow
smoothly and eliminates much of
the confusion that could have
resulted in the overlapping scenes.
Lighting designer John Munro
turns those sheer-curtained walls
into a series of light shows to
change the mood.
Despite the strong production,
there is still something unsatisfying
in The Dining Room. With no con
tinuing characters (except the room
itself), there's a frustration of never
getting to really know anybody. It's
like being at a very large dinner
party with interesting people you've
never met before and will never
meet again: it's a delightful experi
ence while it lasts but you wish you
knew these people better. Still, it's
better to know these people a short
while than never to have met them
at all.
Happy Sweet 16
Chuckie
Happy Birthday
Phyllis
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