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Chains of Dew

Published Monday 17 March 2008 at 10:55 by John Thaxter

Sam Walters has unearthed another gem for his season of plays by women, this time a potentially commercial hit, a provocative comedy by Susan Glaspell not seen since its Cape Cod premiere in 1922.

At its heart, Nora is a dynamic young New Yorker with a bee in her bonnet about birth control. In pursuit of her lover Seymore, she takes her radical ideas to a conservative Midwest township where she enjoys unexpected success with his kittenish wife Dotty and his widowed mother who devoted her younger life to raising seven children.

Glaspell has written three marvellous parts for women, played here with such zip and relish that they come zinging off the page, especially Ruth Everett as Nora, whose refreshing breeze of new ideas breaks down all resistance in a starry performance that delights the audience.

As Dotty, Katie McGuinness plays a submissive bride whose character is utterly transformed when she bobs her long tresses in a bid for emancipation, while Helen Ryan as her stepmother delivers a witty revelation of the dark side of a woman spending her declining years making rag dolls with a secret message.

David Annen also shines in the complex role of Seymore, a small-town banker and published poet who secretly yearns for a life among the intelligentsia, but is tied to his desk by the chains of the title.

In recent years the Orange Tree has not looked for West End transfers, but Kate Saxon’s lively staging deserves a longer life, especially were it given some judicious trimming to sharpen the impact of its second act.

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