Review of Loft Theatre Company production of Collaborators (2009)

He’s jokey. He’s a lawyer. He writes scripts. His marriage is a war zone.

There can be little doubt of the autobiographical nature of this play by the late John Mortimer. What remains in question is the validity of the piece several decades on. Is it clever or indulgent, witty or verbose?

Unfortunately, this lacklustre production sheds little light. If any real subtlety has lingered from the 1970s, it is lost through director Hugh Sorrill’s delivery in the style of a tired television sitcom in which the players constantly strike poses and try desperately hard to be funny.

I don’t think it’s all the actors’ fault in this case. Mortimer’s dialogue and plotting reek of contrivance and James Wolstenholme plays central character Henry (i.e. Mortimer?) as a twitchy, manic eccentric cavorting around the stage, doing the odd pratfall and generally being very tiresome. In contrast, wife Katherine, in the hands of Jo-Anne Ward, displays the sparkle of a cardboard cut-out, thwarted by the playwright’s rather cloudy vision of an inwardly frustrated career woman seeking some sort of intellectual stimulation.

It is left to Martin Eggleston as brash American entrepreneur Sam to inject shards of honesty into a character who wavers between fast-talking ebullience and deeper emotional awareness. This is a somewhat uneven performance but it does score in places and suggest a little more of the underlying themes.

A well-designed set, some effective record choices and a somewhat ridiculous dance routine contribute to the mixed blessings of the piece. Its apparent inner aim to explore the realities of stressful domestic conflict is certainly not achieved by this performance but, all things considered, I suspect the fault lies with what is actually a sub-standard play.

Star rating: *

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Peter McGarry is an experienced, independent professional theatre critic who has agreed to review Loft Theatre Company productions.

The agreement with the Loft is that Peter is free to express his opinions for good or ill. The Loft Theatre Company has no control whatsoever over the content of these reviews and will never comment publicly on what he writes.