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Review: 'Mrs T' pays an impressive Price
George Dodds28/10/2005
SOMETIMES it's just impossible to clear your mind and
concentrate on the big picture ... and so it turned out on Monday
night.
The compactness of The Library is ideally suited for Arthur
Miller's dissection of a family at war, its stage cluttered by the
keepsakes of a life which has turned sour for all the
participants.
It allowed Rolf Saxon to show the full range of emotions felt by
Victor, the steady cop who gave up his dreams of life as a
scientist to care for a father seemingly broken by the Wall Street
crash.
Stuart Milligan was equally impressive as flash sibling Walter, who
did stay at college and went on to make his name as a
world-renowned surgeon and doctor - indeed his rather smart
hand-made suit and coat were the result of a "two gallstones
removed from a rich Indian".
And then there is David Fleeshman - outstanding as Gregory Soloman
the 80-something dealer invited toput a price on the furnishings
and fittings which were the backdrop to Victor and Walter's
life.
Unlike the furniture there is nothing solid about the reasons for
Victor's hatred for his brother, stoked by a 16 year gap between
meetings - they come largely from a less thatn historically
accurate interpretation of the facts.
The brothers' manipulative father had conned Victor into living a
lie - he may have scrounged from the dustbins for food, but all the
while his father had a fortune invested and used guilt to keep his
son tied to him rather than building his own life.
As Victor's world unravels in the second act and home truths are
forced upon him by his brother, the on-stage tension between two
fine actors is cranked up to the maximum ... and yet.
You find your attention wanders to Victor's wife Esther (Sue
Jenkins).
It's not so much the realisation that for all his strengths as a
writer, Miller always struggled to give his female characters much
more than a peripheral, doormat feel.
It's not even Jenkins' rather harsh, tinny Manhattan drawl. No, it
is actually that with her power suit, pearls, handbag and severe
bouffant hair-do we get an uncanny view of how Margaret Thatcher
would have been had she been the frustrated 50-something,
alcohol-soaked wife of a 1960s New York cop, determined to meddle
and sure that all that was missing from life was money, and lots of
it.
Unlike Mrs T, this lady was for turning as Esther finally realises
that what she has (Victor) is what she wants.
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