The Vortex

Published Wednesday 27 February 2008 at 11:50 by Susan Elkin

It is difficult to bring off this 84 year old war horse which opens like a sunny comedy with all those outrageous, devastating Cowardian one-liners - many of them delivered with delicious panache by Barry Stanton as Pauney Quentin.

From then on it’s down the slope into the murky shadows until the play thinks it’s a tragedy - which, even with Peter Hall’s hand on the tiller, it doesn’t quite manage since it’s hard to care much about any of these self-obsessed, shallow people.

Florence Lancaster, ageing beauty with toy boy (rather woodenly play by Daniel Pirrie - not much for two women to fall out over) is a cross between Cleopatra and Lady Bracknell, but without the edge of either. She over-reacts in every situation. It’s a huge part and Felicity Kendal’s posturing, volatile, sobbing, pleading in ‘shrill vanity’ is a bravura performance which hits most of the buttons. Phoebe Nicholls as the straight talking Ruth is a good foil for Kendal and their scene together, after Florence has discovered her beau kissing an ex - soon to be current lover (Cressida Trew) - is good theatre.

And so to Dan Stevens as Florence’s effete, drug addicted son, Nicky, a part Coward wrote for himself. Stevens gets the brooding introspection right and the ambivalence about the girl he is trying to convince himself he wants to marry. But the tricky last scene in which, Hamlet-like, he confronts his capricious mother in her bedroom about her lovers succeeds only partly because it strays perilously close to melodrama. His boorish hectoring and her histrionic reactions are made to seem pretty implausible, although his observations about his devastated, ignored father (Paul Ridley) are moving.

The play looks good on the stage. Alison Chitty’s sets are delightfully detailed in muted colours and Kendal manages to be vivacious in violet three times - her frocks as divine as her character thinks she is.