Theatre

Airswimming and Daniel Deronda

Alan Hindle | Saturday 15 May, 2010 15:57

In ancient times a woman’s uterus, if left unmoistened, might wander freely about her body poking curiously at her other organs. Left uncorrected it could climb up inside her chest and strangle her. Or a woman’s problems might stem from devils, or thinking too much. Reading. Wearing trousers. Science is tricky. Over the centuries, as male physicians got better at diagnosing “female troubles” like hysteria or… well, hysteria pretty much covered everything, it was decided women just needed to start having more sex with men. Otherwise, patients incarcerated in mental hospitals for durations as arbitrary as everything else might have their genitals massaged using high-powered water hoses until they attained Hysterical Paroxysm.

In Charlotte Jones’s Airswimming two women, Persephone and Dora have been locked up together in a grey-tiled institution since the 1920s. Charged with scrubbing the place clean every day, their real task is to keep track of the years rolling by and avoid going mad.

Billed as a heart-warming dramedy, aside from a recurring gag wig there aren’t many laughs in Airswimming. Perhaps it’s because the two actresses aren’t allowed to interact much. Ellen Gylen’s Persephone resolutely delivers to the spotlight, occasionally throwing lines back at her cellmate. This might emphasise her fixation on a brighter if delusional future, but leaves Jane Dodd’s Dora twisting earnestly alone in the background. The twisting actually works, I think. Dora is a disciplined, jolly, chipper soldier who I first thought should have exhibited more physical control.

However, years trapped in her cell have wrenched up her insides until her outside can’t help but unravel.

The performances, then, are mixed; and Gylen needs to figure out what to do with her hands. But director Brenden Lovett squelches out what should be a character-driven comedy drama by not allowing his characters to interact. Instead he keeps them locked away from each other, and while that may be logical direction given the nature of the script it doesn’t help Airswimming as theatre.

In Daniel Deronda fortune and social standing are tossed with abandon round a spinning roulette wheel. Life is a cabaret but society is a casino. Ladies squeezed into frothy dresses like balloons, waists crushed into their bosoms, and gentlemen in tweaked goatees and quivering muttonchops swirl around each other in the quadrille of 19th century society. The real dance, though, is the choreography of eyebrows, glances, and sly whispers that crumble reputations.

Selfish, frivolous Gwendolen Harleth draws suitors and gossip. She indulges a taste for gambling until told her family’s estate is gone and she must settle into a sensible arrangement. She marries heartless bounder Henleigh Grandcourt, but falls for decent, intense, increasingly Jewish Daniel Deronda.

In its day, Daniel Deronda was controversial as much for the lifestyle of its author George Eliot as the treatment of its subject. Folks didn’t know what to make of its progressive depiction of Hebrews. In adapting this massive, convoluted brick of a book for the stage author John Cooper plumps for reverence of the word over respect for the spirit. So while it’s interesting to see the forward-thinking Eliot create a stereotyped but radically favorable character like Mordecai/Ezra Cohen, it’s still cringeworthy watching this consumptive, hunchbacked, hand-wringing, gold coin-biting fulfillment of the clichéd Jew on the modern stage.

Traffic of the Stage’s production has a large cast and sumptuous, accurate costumes, but the fun of amateur dramatics is that the personality of the performers is as important as the characters they portray. So while RADA-trained Patrick Ross as the dastardly Grandcourt, has the stillness and consistency of the classically trained actor, self-described “eclectic” actor Lee Ravitz as the scenery-gobbling Clinton and Mordecai is more fun to watch. Sally-Anne Beighton holds the stage as the cold and coy Gwendolen, warming up as her heart is lost to Deronda and her soul to Grandcourt. All the players have a ball. But at two and a half hours plus interval, the ball gets pretty tiring.

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