Review of Loft Theatre Company production of Talking Heads (2012)

By its very nature, Talking Heads suggests an intimate studio environment. What a bold move, then, to pitch this trio of monologues on to the Loft’s main stage.

The tactic works through imaginative placing of the characters and three separate performances which ring with passion and conviction.

Writer Alan Bennett may be renowned for his crisp northern humour but, as with Alan Ayckbourn, there is an underlying bitterness and sense of relentless frustration in his people. Not for sardonic, disillusioned vicar’s wife Susan or mother’s boy Graham or lonely, waspish Doris is there any real joy in life. Their individual lots revolve around humdrum existence, compromise and more than a touch of despair.

In the first piece, Bed Among the Lentils, Mary MacDonald as Susan reveals her pent-up feelings with superbly controlled timing which enables world-weary sarcasm to emerge as perverse humour. We can’t help endorsing her scathing put-downs of parishioners, Sunday services and her own role of middle-aged Mrs Vicar, to say nothing of her stand against flower-arranging futility in favour of a full-blooded fling with a young Asian grocer.

As for Graham, played with gentle insight by Howard Scott Walker in A Chip in the Sugar, he is unable to loosen mother’s apron strings enough to accept her re-ignited relationship with an old flame. Bennett wrote this with more emphasis on broad laughs à la Les Dawson/Larry Grayson but it still packs an unsettling punch.

For elderly Doris in A Cream Cracker Under the Settee, her narrow life is marred by injustice – those fallen leaves are all from next door, the said stale cream cracker reveals the shortcomings of her home help. The ever-remarkable Anne Wood turns in another stalwart portrayal of human foibles.

Nobody escapes the Bennett bruising – from God to community do-gooders and even the multi-cultural folk who run corner shops. All three pieces are a bit overlong but they are nonetheless provocative, great fun and delightfully presented.

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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.