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The Review - THEATRE by DAN FRANKLIN
Published: 17 January 2008

The Conservatory - playing at the Old Red Lion

Fractured family seeks builder to mend cracks

THE CONSERVATORY
Old Red Lion

THE long crack in the plaster of the back wall hints at the terrible rupture at the heart of this new play by Mark Dooley, set in suburban Wigan.
The action begins with Linda Blackburn (Cate Hamer) excitedly leaving a message for her teenage son Michael (an able Jamie Samuel) that their conservatory is finished.
Through a series of time shifts, we learn that Linda’s husband has committed suicide, that the building of the conservatory is an attempt to restore structure and admit light into her fractured life, and to fulfil the old adage that a happy home equates to a happy heart.
Hamer fares well in a challenging role with a character who must weather the storms of fortune, and the criticism of others.
Her mother Jean (Tina Gray) fusses and nags in an amusing manner but the creeping sense of her callousness, commenting that her daughter is making herself ill, that she must seek professional help, sound like barbs and not words of comfort.
Old school acquaintance Billy Bakewell (Tony Bell) comes back into her life, but his pledge to build the conservatory on the cheap feels doomed from the start; Bell’s performance is warm and well-measured.
But the forging of their relationship in nostalgia and remembrance (if not wholesale revision) of the past barely conceals his real desire.
The play succeeds in portraying the quiet intensity of life in a normal family trying to cope with grief, at least until Dooley dovetails the final act into violence and melodrama.
It’s a shame that frequent set changes and over-ambitious sequencing disrupt the flow of the performance as the writing has its funny moments and contains some truths; it should not be afraid to tell its domestic tragedy straight.
Until February 3
020 7837 7816

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