Review: Benefactors at the Lace Market Theatre. Nottingham

Michael Frayn’s Benefactors, seen here in an intimate studio performance at Nottingham’s Lace Market Theatre, directed by Marcus Wakely, concerns David (Trev Clarke) an idealistic architect in the throes of re-vitalising the housing units in a run down slum section of London centred around Basuto Road. David is forced into considering the potentiality of two proposed skyscrapers for re-housing despite his dislike for them as buildings. Perhaps to over simplify the plot we find, at the centre of the piece, an architect who is unclear about his architectural motivations and is swayed against his better judgement to build higher and higher. Everybody around him, his wife and his originally friendly neighbours react differently to his plans of social reform.

Frayn’s play however, harbours no simplistic nor cut out two dimensional characters. The reality of human relationships and behaviour, in all their subtleties are what lie at the heart of the piece. The price of political and psychological change are what engages and makes this a fascinating and wryly amusing piece of social theatre from the writer of such diverse pieces as Noises Off and Copenhagen.

The play takes place in London in the late 1960’s when brutalist modern high rise blocks were being introduced into the city to replace the slums of the 1950s and the war damaged estates of the mid 1940s. David’s easy going wife Jane (Clare Choubey) and unseen kids appear to be little more than add ons to his architectural dreams. However his character doesn’t seem monstrous or neglectful but driven. Sheila (Dawn Price) and Colin (Robert Chilton), near neighbours and friends also have unseen children and bleed into David and Jane’s lives in politely and in not so politely ways.

The story features and builds up with revelatory flashback monologues ten years after the events. This retrospective device is brought about predominantly by the women in the first act, and mainly the men in the second. The device serves to engage the audience in the tumultuous life changes that each of the characters go through on a daily basis. Each of the four characters take turn to be the narrator in the piece and all of the actors express their parts very well in what is a wordy and witty play. With lesser actors Benefactors could be a verbal dirge but the Lace Market Theatre cast are constantly engaging.

The title Benefactors reflects on three of the characters believing that they are do-gooders and that their actions and intentions are really for the benefit of humankind or, at best, their more immediate families and friends. Such beliefs are questionable and form the subtle heart of the drama as most of what they do seems only to benefit themselves.

Very soon David’s friend and cruel journalist Colin becomes the enemy who joins the project’s protesters. Colin’s needy wife Sheila joins David as an unqualified secretary. Additional daily architectural nightmares confound the plot. Electrical and sewer piping thwart architectural progress and major obstructions are discovered underneath the very spot where the buildings are to be erected. Maritally seperated Colin becomes a squatter inhabiting one of the deserted Basuto Road buildings and so the drama builds.

The whole piece becomes deliciously but uncomfortably voyeuristic and at one point Colin accuses his loveless and lovesick wife of being in love with Jane and further on of being in love with David. He could be correct in both circumstances. We also get to observe in detail, the forever changing relationships of each of the characters, to their spouse and the volatile behaviour it can engender.

Dawn Price as Sheila and Trev Clarke as concerned architect David come close to winning the acting honours for their very human and truthful performances as well as Robert Chilton as Machiavellian journalist Colin and Clare Choubey as the turncoat wife who happily touts her clipboard attempting to garner information from the reluctant residents of the soon to be destroyed old housing estate. Or are they?

All four actors work exceptionally well with the text and in engaging an audience practically in the round. Not an easy task. Director Marcus Wakely has drawn out some sterling performance in this challenging piece. This play is one that is about to transfer to Karlsruhe in Germany mid May and knowing the mixed language audiences there they will find the play equally engaging and enjoy the dry humour of Frayn’s compelling play.

Michael Darmola’s lighting design and Matthew Allock’s subtle sound scape help develop the realism within the surrealism of the piece.

Benefactors won the Laurence Olivier Award for the best play of 1984 and although theatrical expectations and tastes may have changed in the proceeding years it is still a beautifully written accessible play that holds our attention with its surreal moments of dry wit and human stories coupled with the theme of good intentions gone bad. The questions the play raises about idealism and social change are still very relevant today.

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"Benefactors" by Michael Frayn

Nottingham Lace Market Theatre

Benefactors is set in the 1960s and concerns an idealistic architect David and his wife Jane and their relationship with the cynical Colin and his wife Sheila.

David is attempting to build some new homes to replace the slum housing of Basuto Road and is gradually forced by circumstances into building skyscrapers despite his initial aversion to these. Sheila becomes his secretary but is she helping him or the other way around?

Written in 1984 it was the recipient of the Laurence Olivier Award for the Best New Play for that year, but does the play stand up over 30 years later?

For me, it didn't and it's no Noises Off, which is the play Michael Frayn is known for. It's a very different kettle of fish as this play, although I found plenty to smile about, the comedy seems to be written in quite ad hoc, whereas Noises Off was an out and out comedy farce.

Benefactors is a very wordy play about a fairly serious subject and the cast do a sterling job with a good sense of timing which makes for a fast paced presentation.

Trev Clarke and Clare Choubey play the Kitzingers, David and Jane. This couple are a true couple and by that I mean that they are wholly believable because they argue and shout but they stick by each other throughout.

Dawn Price and Robert Chilton play the Molyneuxs, Sheila and Colin. They are the couple who at first seem to be the solid couple but turn out to be very different by the end of the play.

There are some very good character roles played out by all four and you find yourself having the biggest sympathy for Sheila, whose confidence grows and grows in the second act. A nice "grower" of a role for Dawn.

All four actors presented their characters with great strength but for me I didn't feel the story was a strong enough one, but this is only my opinion, Maybe I was spoiled with Frayn's Noises Off which I absolutely loved to bits,

A tribute to director Marcus Wakely, Trev, Clare, Dawn and Robert though for bringing out the comedy in the play and especially for dealing with the wordy script, which did make for an interesting aural experience.

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Benefactors, Lace Market Theatre, Nottingham, review

The Kitzingers, he an architect, she his secretary, live over the road and are friends with the Molyneuxs, he a journalist, she an ex-nurse stay at home. The Molyneuxs, children and all, spend too much time at their friends' house, especially Mrs Molyneux when her husband's at work. Eventually relationships start to fray and re-form.

This is sixties London. Architect David is involved in a project to raze a crumbling neighbourhood and replace it with high-rise flats. During the course of the play his original conception gets more and more compromised, at the same time as opposition from the other three increasingly coalesces.

It being typical of much of Michael Frayn's dramatic work, the story is narrated a decade after the events by each of the characters, who take turns to give their take on what actually happened and why.

It's a simple yet meaty play, full of abstract ideas. You have to concentrate. And particularly near the start the language frequently soars away into intentionally unrealistic poetic flight.

But there's a lot of potential for laughs, too much of which was not properly exploited by the cast, at least on press night. There was, as well, a lack of pace before the interval caused perhaps by uncertainty over lines.

All the actors had their moments, the strongest performance coming from Lace Market Theatre newcomer Dawn Price, as Sheila. The pathetic insecurity of her character was skilfully brought out. Trev Clarke's David was also done well, particularly in his scenes with Sheila, and when he was narrating. And it's David who complains that he's got "architect's elbow".

Clare Choubey, as his wife Jane, delivered perhaps the best work she has done at the Lace Market Theatre, in the shouty bit at the end especially. The cynical Colin (Robert Chilton) has one of the best lines when he opines "Fairness and tidiness and truth are for those who have got what they want already".

There's at least one dud line. Why does Sheila ask David about "London Airport"? Surely, by the sixties people, especially Londoners, were talking in terms of Heathrow, or Gatwick, or wherever.

And another niggle. Why are these plays invariably set in London? Towns and cities all over the land were suffering destruction in the hands of go-getting architects and planners. Why not Reading or Manchester?

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Lachen aus dem Off

Lace Market Theatre in Karlsruhe (2): „Benefactors“

Als zweite Produktion des Lace Market Theatre aus Nottingham fand auf der Bühne des Jakobus-Theater eine Aufführung von Michael Frayns 1984 entstandenem Stück „Benefactors“ statt, zu Deutsch „Wohltäter“. Benefactors ist ein eindringliches Spiel um Pläne, seien es Lebenspläne oder Baupläne, und deren Scheitern.

Für jemanden wie den Architekten David Kitzminger lassen sich Bau- und Lebensplan ohnehin nicht ganz auseinanderhalten. Im London der Sechzigerjahre plant der idealistische Architekt eine menschenfreundliche Wohnanlage im Baugebiet der Basuto Road. Dafür müssen die alten Wohnhäuser abgerissen werden. Seine Frau Sheila unterstützt ihn dabei als Sekretärin und beim Marketing. Den Kitzmingers gegenüber lebt das Ehepaar Moleneux: Colin, ein früherer Englischlehrer, mittlerweile Journalist und Betreiber eines Magazins für Hausfrauen sowie seine Gattin Sheila, die durch einen starken Hütetrieb gekennzeichnet ist. Innerhalb dieses Personenquadrats verdichten sich Hoffnung, Scheitern, Neuanfang zu einem packenden Spiel. Regisseur Marcus Wakely lässt seine Protagonisten konsequent in einem einzigen Bühnenbild agieren. Es ist dies das Wohnzimmer der Kitzmingers. Hier gehen sich die Ehepaare auf die Nerven und können doch nur schwer voneinander lassen.

Die von Dawn Price überfürsorglich klammernd dargestellte Sheila wird hier zur Mitarbeiterin des seinen Idealismus langsam verlierenden David, gespielt von Trev Clarke, und flüchtet sich hierin vor ihrem Gatten Colin, dessenzynische Grundhaltung von Robert Chilton exzellent ausgedeutet wird. Immer vierte Wand, wenden sich direkt and Publikum.

Es beginnt der Zerfall. Die Umstände erfordern von David die Wohnanlage zum Hochhaus zu verändern. Sheila und Colin trennen sich und Colin bekämpft nun das ganze Bauprojekt. Er wird Aktivist und unterstützt die alten Bewohner von Basuto Road, die gar nicht aus ihren Häusern heraus wollen, wobei er von Davids Frau Jane, zunächst insgeheim, später dann offen unterstützt wird. Jane, von der famosen Clare Choubey gegeben, ist die Figur mit dem grössten Sinn fürs Praktische, das Wechseln der Fronten fällt ihr leicht Zum Schluss bleibt in diesem Drama nur noch das Lachen, das, da es aus dem Off kommt, nur noch ein Auslachen der Charaktere sein kann. Sehenswert.

Laughter off-stage

Lace Market Theatre in Karlsruhe [2]: Benefactors

A performance of Michael Frayn’s 1984 play, Benefactors, in German Do-Gooders, took place as the second production from the Lace Market Theatre in Nottingham on the stage of the Jakobus Theatre. Benefactors is an impressive play about plans, both life plans and building plans, and the way they break down.

For someone like the architect David Kitzminger it is impossible to distinguish between building plans and life plans. In the London of the 60s the idealistic architect is planning a people-friendly housing estate in Basuto Road, which involves the demolition of the old houses. His wife Sheila supports him as his secretary and with the marketing. Opposite the Kitzmingers live the Molyneux: Colin, a former English teacher and now a journalist and producer of a magazine for housewives, and his wife Sheila, characterized by a strong caring impulse. Within this group of four, hopes, failures and new beginnings intensify to become a gripping play. The director Marcus Wakely logically gives his protagonists a single set, the Kitzmingers’ living-room. Here the couples get on each other’s nerves and yet cannot leave each other alone.

Sheila, played by Dawn Price as over-considerate and clinging, becomes the collaborator of David, played by Trev Clarke, as he slowly loses his idealism, and she takes refuge from her husband Colin, whose basically cynical attitude is excellently interpreted by Robert Chilton. The actors constantly break through the fourth wall and address the

Things fall apart. Circumstances require David to change the housing estate into a high-rise block. Sheila and Colin separate, and Colin fights against the whole building project. He becomes an activist, supporting the old inhabitants of Basuto Road, who do not want to leave their houses; in this he is supported by David’s wife Jane, at first secretly but later openly. Jane, played by the splendid Clare Choubey, has the strongest sense of what is practical, and the change in attitude is easy for her. Finally only laughter remains in this drama and, as it comes from off-stage, it can only be aimed at the characters. Worth seeing.

(translation by Heather Savage)