Camden New Journal - Theatre: The twelve pound look

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The Review - THEATRE by SIMON WROE
Published: 27 March 2008

A timeless look at reaching for riches

THE TWELVE POUND LOOK
King’s Head Theatre

MONEY – its importance or lack of – forms the cornerstone of JM Barrie’s pithy short; so it is somewhat surprising that inflation, that great illusion of wealth so familiar to Londoners, has not yet got its claws into a play written nigh on a century ago.
City hot-shot Harry Sims’s vainglorious assertions that he is “worth at least £250,000” still smacks of braggadocio despite most broom cupboards in the Square Mile now going for more. His ex-wife’s calculation that £12 is all a woman need earn to achieve her independence retains a ring of truth, even if that figure will buy you little more than “freedom fries” these days.
Drafted after the runaway success of Peter Pan, Barrie’s single-act vignette – about a man on the eve of his knighthood who receives a shattering visit from a typist hired to transcribe his acceptance speech – is a tidy caveat for all those who follow riches blindly.
Director Tom King presents the play for a modern audience without falling prey to cheap revisions or staid reverence: Harry (Matt Rix) becomes a nouveau riche Essex boy plucking on his red braces like a Thatcherite harpist, and the writer’s detailed stage directions are lent, to good effect, to the Sims’s omniscient butler. In this company, the anachronisms that do remain seem charming.
King, whose self-penned show, A Dinner Party, was a sell-out at last year’s Edinburgh Festival, helms the 40-minute production with brio, and Laura Murray is a standout from a competent cast as the errant typist and Sims’s former wife.
If there is any justice, this short but sweet offering will be granted a second run in the not too distant future.
Run complete

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