MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O’CONNOR and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Savage House, Enzo, Madfabulous, and Erupcja
Manor
Lyttelton Theatre
MIX together an insolvent, forthright lady of the manor, a drugged-up former pop star, a blind anti-feminist revisionist historian, a supposedly charismatic far-right leader, a hypochondriac slob, a radical black working-class student and her would-be detective, medically trained mother and throw in a dash of aged vicar in underpants and pink fluffy jumper and you might expect a revival of the Carry On tradition.
Put all these ingredients in a physically skewed Restoration manor house on the point of being washed away in a storm of biblical proportions and throw in a dead body and a pinch of ghostly sound effects for seasoning and expectations might slide towards gothic horror or political allegory.
Moira Buffini’s play is none of these.
MARY CONWAY applauds the timely revival of Miller’s study of people fatally deformed by the economics of survival
GORDON PARSONS is blown away by a superb production of Rostand’s comedy of verbal panache and swordmanship
MAYER WAKEFIELD is gripped by a production dives rapidly from champagne-quaffing slick to fraying motormouth
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today


