Archive for August, 2008
Press photos & Tour dates for ‘Enjoy’ by Alan Bennett
The following are the full tour dates and a couple of Press photos for Enjoy:
From 01 September 2008 To 06 September 2008
The Lowry, Salford
From 08 September 2008 To 13 September 2008
The Playhouse, Oxford
From 15 September 2008 To 20 September 2008
Malvern Theatres, Malvern
From 22 September 2008 To 27 September 2008
Theatre Royal, Brighton
From 30 September 2008 To 04 October 2008
New Theatre, Cardiff
From 27 October 2008 To 01 November 2008
Chichester Festival Theatre, Chichester
From 03 November 2008 To 08 November 2008
Arts Theatre, Cambridge
From 10 November 2008 To 15 November 2008
Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Birmingham
From 17 November 2008 To 22 November 2008
Richmond Theatre, Outer London
Rave reviews for Enjoy!
The reviews are coming in thick and fast for Enjoy, this one is by Michael Billington of The Guardian who gave the show 5 out of 5!
Alan Bennett’s 1980 comedy has acquired a sudden topicality with the news that 40,000 households are to be subject to a detailed social survey. For Bennett’s rich and wondrous play is, among many other things, about the way we assume a false identity when under observation. If this sounds unduly solemn, I can only say that Christopher Luscombe’s production, substantially recast since it first appearance at the Palace Watford, had the Bath audience in hysterics.
Bennett’s setting is one of the last back-to-backs in Leeds, occupied by a beleaguered old couple. Connie is a houseproud amnesiac who claims, “I keep that toilet like a palace.” Wilfred, with a steel plate in his head after a hit-and-run accident, is a more tormented soul who cannot wait for the bulldozers to arrive. But when a sexually ambiguous sociologist called “Ms Craig” arrives to monitor the couple’s daily life, everything goes haywire. Their daughter Linda announces she is off to marry a Saudi prince; Wilfred keels over after a brutal attack by a young thug; and the couple’s long-banished gay son is revealed to be in their midst.
The play’s brilliance lies in its mixture of satire and farce. Bennett is clearly attacking the self-consciousness of closely scrutinised behaviour and the transformation of working-class life into a theme-park industry. But his play is also riotously funnny. The highpoint comes in a scene, echoing DH Lawrence’s The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd, in which Wilfred’s supposed corpse is stripped and washed in what a neighbour, Mrs Clegg, calls “the customary manner”. Carol Macready is magnificent as Mrs Clegg, offering a mountainous mixture of fake gentility and voyeuristic curiosity as she eagerly tugs off Wilfred’s trousers. In its ability to combine a social point about bogus traditions with a literary reference, the scene also typifies a play that climaxes with an echo of Proust.
The performances are just about perfect. David Troughton seethes with rage as the abusive, partially paralysed Wilfred, who feels he has been cheated of life. Alison Steadman wisely never patronises Connie but plays her as a simple, kindly woman for whom cleanliness is far superior to godliness. Josie Walker again invests Linda with a vituperative sexiness, while Richard Glaves as the svelte “Ms Craig” has the ambivalent mystery of Ben Jonson’s The Silent Woman. Janet Bird’s design cleverly reminds us that there is a conscious theatricality about this cramped working-class pad destined to end up a museum piece. After its short tour, this joyous production should move lock, stock and barrel into the West End.
Julian is cast in Alan Bennett’s production ‘Enjoy’
Julian has been recently cast as ‘Gregory’ in the Peter Hall companies production of ‘Enjoy’ by Alan Bennett. The production is currently finishing a three week run at the Theatre Royal Bath. The production then tours the country with the next stop being Manchester’s Lowry Theatre between 1st – 6th September.
For the full cast list see: Enjoy West End Cast List
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