VOYAGE ROUND MY FATHER ARTS THEATRE
Allegra Marland Jack Bardoe_
Our parents: to lose them is a child’s worst nightmare but as we grow up they become more familiar. The strange paradox is ; once they die, we spend the rest of our lives trying to find out who they were.
John Mortimer’s play is a homage to his strange powerful and stoic father, And his long-suffering mother too, a woman who quietly ran the life of her erratic often explosively angry husband. The author is their only son. Alone and an outsider in his parents’ lives, his character is often shadowy - not the confident author of Rumpole of the Bailey but a sweet bewildered child always on the margins of family life.
The key to the puzzle of Mortimer’s Voyage is the horrific accident at the centre of all their lives. When the curtain rises we meet the family, the father an irascible but dashingly independent lawyer, at the height of his powers, comfortable in his lovely country home . He delights in his glorious garden. It is there the catastrophe strikes. As he climbs a tree, he hits his head and as the son/narrator tells us, loses the retinas of both eyes. He is struck blind.
Life is clearly never the same again, but bravely the father continues as if it had never happened. What depths of despair and fortitude this must have required is only hinted at. The entire play is almost a performance of resilience and it is conveyed completely convincingly by Rupert Everett who bestrides the stage like a Colossus, a feat of energy and exuberance that never loses touch with the core heartbreak of this man’s life.
Directed by the erstwhile National Theatre supremo Richard Eyre with Rupert Everett an actor of epic brilliance this play dazzled with theatrical talent . If a cast like this can’t keep an audience rapt in their seats, then no one can The play is a great treat, as if the entire theatrical world has come to town - solely to re-invent the life of John Mortimer’s father.
The parents sing a hymn at the school Armistice reunion
The school days of ‘the boy’ his parents send away to an eccentric boarding establishment are hilariously depicted. Headmaster - Julian Wadham is superb in this role - wants to be known as Noah and his attendants Noah’s sons Ham and Japhet Heather Bleasdale is a stern Matey (Matron) and a fabulously offbeat history teacher played by John Dougall with his superbly realised, all too human proclivities made these scenes the funniest you will see on stage.But these altogether outstanding actors reappear as other characters. They are almost a showcase for thespian versatility - each role is pitch perfect , it feels as if there is a cast of dozens.
I especially loved the welcome glamour and fun from the two lovers Miss Cox ( Heather Bleasdale) and Miss Baker (Zena Carswell) Sexy beautiful and fun they rescue some of the downbeat darker moments with a wonderfully wicked 1930s spirit of abandon.
The children in John Mortimer’s life are especially good. Calum Finlay as friend Reigate is so 13 year old fantasist and Allegra Marland as childhood playmate Iris is completely unrecognisable as Elizabeth, John’s wife and just as fabulous in both roles.The tricky part of Mortimer himself goes to Jack Bardoe who does well in a strangely flattened narrator part, but that of course is the point. John/Jack can never be as scintillating, gloriously anarchic and intelligent as Father/Rupert.
Rupert Everett_Allegra Marland
