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The Review - THEATRE by BEN CRAIB
Published: 3 July 2008

Timeless tale of a couple of relationships on the rocks

ON THE ROCKS
Hampstead Theatre

THERE are two sides to Amy Rosenthal’s new play – one is a meticulously researched biographical piece that is firmly rooted in its time, the other is a social comedy that could easily be contemporary.
The latter is by far the strongest.
The setting is Zennor in 1916, the remote Cornish village where DH Laurence and his wife Frieda have invited their literary friends, Catherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murray, to stay for the summer. Laurence’s aim is to create Rananim, an artistic commune of idealistic living.
It ends up just like Christmas, when one is made to spend an unnatural amount of time with people you are meant to be close to (and enjoy every second of it). Tensions soon rise and all the most difficult aspects of the party’s character are brought into sharp relief.
The funniest moments all come from this clash of personalities. The Laurences are alpha human beings who let it all hang out— dominating and angry, they behave with a ritual abusiveness and unselfconscious manner that one might associate with a teenager in front of their parents.
By contrast, Mansfield and Murray are highly reticent, and in Murray’s case deeply repressed – hamstrung by his urge to please and that very English need to avoid all surface conflict with polite banalities.
The funniest scene involves a parlour game between the four degenerating into an argument between the Laurences, which in the blink of an eye turns to overwhelming lust.
Clare Lizzimore’s production has sparkling energy and Paul Burgess’s set is both evocative and suitably claustrophobic.
The acting is excellent. Ed Stoppard gives Laurence the monstrous idealistic fervour of a raw adolescent and Tracy-Ann Oberman’s Frieda swings convincingly wildly between hero worship and the caustic, controlling need to put Laurence down.
Charlotte Emerson’s Mansfield has a tangible festering passion and Nick Caldecott manages to give a charm and integrity to Murray (a character who could easily been reduced to spinelessness).
In the face of all this the “bio-play” aspect, while full of impressive attention to detail, uneasily fades into the background.
This is less a history play than a domestic comedy with historical figures. But this is also where its strength is – Rosenthal says in the programme that she is interested in showing that “fundamentally people haven’t changed at all”.
I think we will all see people we recognise in these two couples.
Until July 26
020 7722 9301

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