HER SLIGHTEST TOUCH. To 10 September.

Scarborough/Filey/Helmsley

HER SLIGHTEST TOUCH
by Torben Betts

Stephen Joseph Theatre Restaurant in rep to 10 September 2004
1.10pm
also in a double-bill with For Starters at Evron Centre Filey 5,12,19,26 August
and Helmsley Arts Centre 14,20-21 August
Runs 50min No interval

TICKETS: 01723 370541
Review: Timothy Ramsden 3 August

The middle-classes dine and watch a comedy that keeps its focus on the middle-class character.Heard about the kind-hearted prostitute and the nervous client? If not, enjoy on; Torben Betts works through the familiar situation efficiently enough. But it's strange to find so tough a playwright up such a cul-de-sac situation. This is Scarborough not Soho, so you know Man isn't going to get his money's worth between the sheets. Nor will he walk out - we've paid for a show that will go on till 2 o' clock. Where else is there to go, shut in this drab room with them except to the soft ending which explains the title's relevance?

With his stuttering sense of failure even as he enters, Stuart Fox's middle-class salesman, whose manners so impress Girl with her experience of the rough side of life, has much more invested in him by the script than does she.

Yet she's potentially more interesting - a survivor who might have a future, both worth exploring more than yet another snack of midlife male crisis. Hints about her background suggest dysfunctional, abusive stereotypes that need filling out to become more than merely exploitative reference points. Betts treats her as might any man seeing a Girl in this situation; it's her appearance that matters, but Man's feelings.

Her full story would be far grubbier than this sanitised picture as she patiently (occasionally impatiently) follows Man's state of mind. And not, perhaps, something audiences would like with their lunchtime grub.

Laura Doddington plays well, and doubtless some 16 year olds can look a decade older - his response to discovering her age is a genuinely funny moment. But there's a glistening quality to this Girl's appearance that doesn't seem to have been through the human mill suggested by the brief glimpses of her biography.

Early on, Man babbles about his life while she tries provocative poses to get her money earned and done with, recalling a scene in Alan Ayckbourn's GamePlan but without any equivalent context. Perhaps Man gets value for his cash in cheap whisky and an apparently sympathetic ear. But, unlike Girl, this sentimental comedy doesn't offer to deliver on its promise.

Girl: Laura Doddington
Man: Stuart Fox

Director: Laurie Sansom
Designer: Pip Leckenby
Costume: Christine Wall

2004-08-09 01:03:15