THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL AT THE ARTS THEATRE
Fabulous dancing cast at the splendid finale
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel never fails to delight audiences. The Arts Theatre was packed to capacity - truly not a spare seat in the house. And all for a story everyone knows well, with actors everyone feels they have grown up with, and a script that seems to write itself so predictable are the lines. So what is the secret of Deborah Moggach, the playwright who created this fabulous fantasy and has seen it go from television to film to more film and now the live stage? Having met her I think I know. She is a true committed signed-up sincere romantic - her faith in the innate goodness of her characters, or the powerful magic of men and women, whatever their age to pursue their dreams, is an irresistible attraction .
Hayley Mills and Rula Lenska
The set should have star billing in this production. It is an entirely convincing recreation of the beautiful Indian location an amazingly lifelike cardboard creation of the - by now- well-known hotel of old people’s dreams.
For anyone who has missed it over the years, the plot is simple. A group of pensioners (or as we should say these days, and, rightly in my view, people of advanced years) have all chosen to come to India rather than the more costly care homes they once considered Once there, everything begins to brighten up but even the romance of old India conceals a more severe modern world of call centres and caste injustice, but the core of the play is the enduring optimism of humanity, the optimism people can, with some imagination, find.
It helps that the one and only Hayley Mills stars as the thoughtful, sensitive and honest Evelyn whose clear-eyed look at her faded life is touchingly created by this star of decades in our lives. She blends some cynicism about men, regret at her late husband’s failure to tell her how much debt they lived with, provokes her to exclaim with passionate recklessness”: Men they’re so difficult I wish I had been a lesbian”. Here is the star of Pollyanna and Whistle down the Wind in advanced years and looking lovely.
The first half of the play was undeniably a bit slow. Players literally took a long time to arrive and leave the stage. It was saved with spectacular panache by another treasured actress of our time, Rula Lenska. She gave a tremendous performance as a thrice-married divorcée and looked - it has to be said- as wonderfully glamorous as when she was first glimpsed with Liza Goddard. Powerful feminine and funny, well done Rula for a performance to lift the spirits of the expectant audience, the flamboyant Mrs Rheinhart is on the hunt for someone to love and look after her. “After all, there are 700 million men in India, one of them must be for me”- she declares, move over Joanna Lumley, here was the professional version and brilliantly audible where we were - in the back of the Circle.
This was true of all these veteran troupers. Professional, brisk and convincing. True, this is not a serious play for a dramatic aficionado, like many adapted books the lines on stage cannot connect with the subtler thoughts of the characters on the page. But it is still fun to see actors of the era, like Paul Nicholas , doing their thing and showing us the art of the thespian is not tied to TV roles, and they can magic up any persona from their store of training and talent. The thoughts in the Best Marigold may not be profound but they are heart-warming - and, in their way, defiant . Old age and death seldom emerge as topics for debate.
My lovely evening with Deborah Moggach - some years ago - included her ideas about my own upcoming wedding. She was immensely interested and suggested we include a novel way of expressing the delight of the occasion. An owl( trained of course ) could swoop down the aisle of the church with the wedding ring in its beak .
She believes in love
