Reviews

IF EVER there was a case of a reviewer’s reservations being swept away in one fell swoop then this is it.

I had always considered this to be a lesser work from the pen of Rodgers and Hammerstein, and when the announcement was made that this company was going to mount this work, I admittedly had some doubts as to the wisdom of the choice.  I need not have worried.

Playwright and novelist Jeff Baron has many plays to his credit, none more performed worldwide than Galleon’s latest production, Visiting Mr Green. Experienced director Vicky Horwood took on the task of breathing new life into this two-hander. A story told by co-protagonists, takes place in the Upper West Side Manhattan apartment of Mr Green – an elderly Jewish gentleman with a cantankerous nature, who is still mourning the loss of his wife, Yetta.

The Summer of the Seventeeth Doll is a truly great play. This production, the first since the recent death of Ray Lawler aged 93, never allows the audience to forget that fact. Dominating the stage, a large photograph of Lawler is suspended.

Robert Jarman has eschewed the standard box set. Whilst beautifully dressed, the stage blacks frame the action like the dusty swags of a studio portrait. There is a piano and a table and the clutter of seventeen years, but none of it is as real as Olive would like to think it is.

It’s a tough test if you want to win the $50,000 Archer Award. First you’ve got to be one of the four chosen active participants, then you’ve got to be declared the winner after a further 6 months working in adjoining rooms. But the prize is big enough to draw many in, and the four presented by writer Isabella McDermott are each determined to be champion. After briefly toying with the idea of sharing the prize, they decide to fight it out - and may the best man/woman win.