Stormy passions in Young America season
Royal & Derngate stage early plays by classic American writers.
THE history of American youth culture is steeped in anger, frustration and claustrophobia. Millions of small town kids who, at least once in their lives, yearn to break free from the confines of their society to spread their wings.
The Royal & Derngate is playing host to two plays that, though written by different men, share a common theme.
Young America brings early works by both Tennessee Williams and Eugene O Neill to The Royal stage and they echo the desires of their country's youth to aspire to more than the expectations of their families and peers.
In Williams' Spring Storm the stage is set for a passionate confrontation as flighty young thing Heavenly Critchfield (only a child of the Deep South could get away with being called Heavenly!) firsts flutters her eyelashes at the muscular Dick Miles before changing her affections to the educated, though weak, Arthur Shannon.
Torn between bettering her social position and basic lust she careers like a train-wreck through the play, selfishly destroying the lives of those around her.
It seems par for the course that each writer crafted his men as opposites with the intelligent, poet-reading, sensitive beau slated as being weak, tortured and ineffectual, unable to stand up to the rigours of life in either the farmsteads of Connecticut or besides the banks of the mighty Mississippi.
Meanwhile the physical brute, all brawn and natural ability to work the land, is seen as the only men capable of success in their harsh environment – and perhaps that is as it should have been for the eras when the stories are set.
Even so it is the women who hold all the cards and direct their men-folk like puppets, everyone a slave to their emotions.
Spring Storm is set in 1930s Mississippi and charts the life of Heavenly as she tries to make the best of a bad match. The love triangle is thrown off kilter as emotions rise and fall between the temptress, an early version of so many fallen southern belles in Williams' repertoire, Shannon and Miles.
The drama plays like an American tragedy with little to lift the spirits. There are similarities to Steinbeck's Depression-fuelled stories and, particularly in the final scenes, Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind. There's a lot of Scarlett in Heavenly.
O'Neill's Beyond The Horizon is set earlier in the 20th century on a remote farm. We know we're near the sea, it's just over those hills, but families are born and die on their farmsteads. They're not expected to develop wanderlust.
Once again there's the eternal triangle. Brothers Robert and Andrew Mayo both love homebody Ruth Atkins but there's a fourth character to the love story and that's thwarted ambition.
The plays deal with a restless generation that is unsure of its future. They don't want the oppressive lives of their parents but they're uncertain how to achieve happiness in either their relationships or their careers. Meanwhile the women are limited by the expectations of their sex.
The cast is common to both plays and stretches their abilities to the limit. Liz White, who appeared in BBC TV's hugely successful Life On Mars, is more confident as the sexy minx, Heavenly, though her appearance as the dowdy Ruth is meatier as the once shy innocent becomes embittered and disillusioned as she suffers from the poor choices she makes.
Michael Malarkey, as Robert and Arthur, has to work hard as his characters' weaknesses drive the stories along. In Spring Storm he also voices the writer's thoughts in the form of an episodic narration, said in that sexy southern drawl, that gives stage direction to the characters and plot development.
Poor Michael Thomson bares his chest as the sex appeal for Ruth/Heavenly in the joint roles of Andrew and Dick. He disappears for long stretches of both plays and his characters are rarely fleshed out.
There's good support from the plays' more senior actors particularly James Jordan in the patriarchal roles of James Mayo and Oliver Critchfield and Jacqueline King as his wives Kate Mayo and Esmeralda Critchfield.
And special mention must be made of the cute little moppet who made a brief appearance in Horizon. She's un-credited in the programme but she was a cutie who showed real promise.
The Sarah Parks' designed set, backed by stunning lighting courtesy of Chris Davey, was simple but effective. In Beyond The Horizon there was nothing but a stunning vista behind the dead limbs of an old tree while Spring Storm presents the wreckage of a house that's imaginatively used throughout.
Both plays are running in rotation until November 14. For tickets and information contact the box office 01604 624811 or go online www.royalandderngate.co.uk
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