Photos – Bob SearyAfter Act One of After The Dance, I needed a drink. But not from Peter, the serious young insect character from the play who, on two occasions, when his employer's wife, Joan, asks for tonic in her gin, he both times spritzes her drink from a soda syphon!
This is one of the annoying distractions of this production of Terence Rattigan's “lost” or “overlooked” early work, a play which originally opened just before the Nazi's goose-stepped into Poland, and folded, like Warsaw defences, a short time later.
The other aggravation in this production of Terence's temperance in a teacup is the use of herbal cigarettes. Actors who do not know how to smoke should not be let near a gasper, and the pungent pong of fake fags utterly destroy any sense of tobacco and tar truth.
After The Dance concerns itself with the generation that missed the First World War by a whisker and were celebrating and commiserating the hard won peace with copious amounts of whisky – predominantly Irish in this production – gin, brandy, and wine (when one can be bothered to fetch it from the cellar).
Head of this hedonistic household is David Scott-Fowler, idle rich heir and hair of the dog connoisseur, a wannabee historian and accomplished alcoholic. He's married to Joan and related to Peter. He and Joan are renowned for throwing marvellous parties where guests display the antics of those mentioned in Noel Coward's ditty to degeneracy, I've Been To A Marvellous Party.
They entertain a permanent house guest, John, an acerbic souse who has his own bedroom but normally passes out on the couch after a night on the sauce. Their friends are a conga line of soak holes, kicking up their well heeled, elbow bending selves in a dizzy decadent dance. As Peter observes, “these people are all too busy putting on an act that they haven’t got time to be themselves... they think it's boring to be oneself.”
Peter's fiance, Helen, thinks their trouble is they've got too much money, and she sets out to save David from himself, his cohorts, his hangers on, and even his wife. Persuading him to go on the wagon, she then cajoles him into divorcing Joan and quarantining his coterie. For David, it is, sadly, a case of abstinence makes the heart go yonder.
After The Dance trips the light fantastic through a glass darkly, cutting the rug from jump and jive to wowser waltz and puritan polka.
Three good reasons to see this pre War relic are the fully fleshed performances of the trio of lead actresses. Amelia Robertson-Cuninghame is gorgeous as Joan, devoted to David, with a varnished veneer of cheer but unable to preserve a positive spin on her spouse's desertion. Alyssan Russell perfectly personifies the bombastic bustle as the Scott-Fowler's bull in a china shop chum Julia, kept aloft by the gossamer of gossip, an effervescence fuelled by buckets of brandy. Claudia Ware is the epitome of the gormless conniving gold digger masquerading as a virginal and virtuous Nightingale.
Production values are also good, with the light fantastic is supplied by Liam O'Keefe nicely illuminating a crisp and clean set – except for the remarkably grubby centre stage sofa – by John Cervenka.
New Theatre presents
AFTER THE DANCE
by Terence Rattigan
Director Giles Gartrell-Mills
Venue: New Theatre | 542 King Street, Newtown, NSW
Dates: 8 August – 9 September 2017
Tickets: $35 – $20
Bookings: www.newtheatre.org.au
