Review: RED PEPPERS / AGED IN WOOD, Theatre at the Tabard
Photo credit: Leda Omra
Noël Coward’s Red Peppers is the best-known of the ten short plays making up Tonight at 8.30, but is paired at the Tabard with a new one-act play set in the same dressing room ninety years later. It’s an interesting concept but we fear the Master outwrites his contemporary counterpart on this occasion.
Red Peppers reeks of music hall and variety with characters that ring true even when exaggerated and lightly sketched in with just one or two appearances. Jessica Martin and Jon Osbaldeston play a married song and dance act on the way down the bill, bickering with one another, the musical director and the theatre manager. They also get to sing two Coward songs: ‘Has Anybody Seen our Ship?’ and ‘Men About Town’. These sound exactly like the kind of songs that George and Lily Pepper would be singing, and are well performed, particularly by Jessica Martin, who is a versatile performer with a background in music hall and musical theatre, and is able to totally convince in the role. Osbaldeston sings well too but perhaps lacks the common touch needed by the character.
As musical director Bert Bentley, Philip Gill is an excellent last minute replacement, having only joined the production just before press night. He inhabits the character so fully that you can imagine how he would run the Monday morning band call, and what his response would be to complaints about the tempo. Dominic McChesney is a convincing theatre manager, always trying to keep the peace between the turns, and Rhys Cannon is a rather modern and mature call boy. Emma Vansittart makes the most of her fleeting appearance as a fading West End actress.
It's well directed by Jason Moore and designed by Ian Nicholas, who gives us a suitable provincial dressing room. He also gives us a variety of suitable costumes for both plays and we will forgive the velcro that seems to be in use for a 1930s quick change. It’s a short play, around 30 minutes, but shows Coward at his best with light comedy and his ability to create rounded characters from a few lines and interactions. A shame, though, not to get the full effect of the finale with a tap dance thrown into total chaos by the increased tempo.
After the interval, we are back in the same dressing room but in the present day, ninety years later. The posters on the wall have changed but much else is the same, which is not totally unlikely in some theatres. Aged in Wood is a new play by Cian Griffin which takes up some of the themes from Red Peppers: not just the dressing room setting but a bickering central couple, discussions of tempo and mutual jealousies between performers. The play begins well with some funny lines but when it moves on to a long scene between the central couple, the tone seems to have shifted too far from the first play. Griffin writes with rather less of the wit and sparkle that Coward brings to his play, and although the same cast make as much as they can of their characters, the pace is slower and the lengthy running time of almost an hour also unbalances the evening.
Emma Vansittart has rather more of the action in this play, as the central character’s agent and with some lines that went down well with the press night audience, many of them performers themselves. Philip Gill is a very funny Rufus Good, frantic to find ways of smuggling prompts on stage. Jessica Martin, too, is always watchable and makes us believe in Deena Ames, fading star of theatre, losing her confidence but hoping for just one more break.
It’s always good to see Red Peppers again though, and Jessica Martin sparkles in both plays: reason alone to head for the Tabard Theatre during the short run.
*** Three stars
Reviewed by: Chris Abbott
