Lloyd Evans
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The Ugly One is a Pinteresque sketch about a hideous-looking bloke who has a facelift that transforms him into a sex-god. The plot moves elegantly through its concentric spirals and the lackadaisical presentation (no costumes, no set, just jeans and sofas) cleverly deconstructs and thus emphasises the themes of cosmetic perfection that the play examines. Ultimately the answers are rather glib and foreseeable. Do looks matter? Yes. Can beauty be a curse? Yes. If your dreams come true will …anyway, you get the idea. A small enjoyable slice of fun.
In May Michael Attenborough revived a 1930s play, Big White Fog, which was a big white flop. Blame the script. Awake and Sing! is a triumph, and for the same reason. Clifford Odets is a superb, undervalued writer with a fantastic gift for dramatising human speech and creating deft, free-flowing characters. His world is familiar to us from the work of his successors, Arthur Miller and Woody Allen. We’re in a cramped rented apartment occupied by a bickering family of New York Jews. The story turns on Stockard Channing’s indomitable, self-pitying mother Bessie who hatches a plot to marry off her pregnant daughter to a besotted stooge. When her son Ralph discovers the conspiracy he suddenly realises his parents’ respectability is a shameful, manipulative hoax. The script handles all the registers with perfect ease, moving through comedy and melodrama to the peaks of tragic grandeur. There are flashes of amazing prescience. The family curmudgeon is grandpa Jacob (finely done by John Rogan), a Marxist in a wheelchair who trundles around the flat filling young Ralph’s head with dreams of revolution. The image of the crippled sage spurring youth to rebel is one that haunts us today. At one point the old man aims a bony finger at his grandson and quakes, ‘In this boy’s life a new Red Sea will happen. I can see it.’ That was written in 1935. The cast are faultless. Trevor Cooper as Uncle Morty gives a brilliant portrait of sly, two-faced greed. Jodie Whittaker is quietly stunning in the role of Hennie, the gorgeous wayward daughter. Best of all is Nigel Lindsay as Moe Alexrood, a Great War veteran with a wooden leg, a sackful of grievances and a wonderful line in cynical malice. Lindsay manages to be oafish, big-hearted and sexy all at once. At the play’s climax he bears down on Hennie and begs her to swap her pinched pointless life for a new start with him. What a moment! As he tempts her and she wavers, the sad little apartment is suddenly magnetised with delicious tensions which spread to every corner of the theatre. The West End is crying out for straight plays that please crowds. This one doesn’t just please; it seduces.
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