The Stage

Under the Blue Sky

Published Monday 28 July 2008 at 11:00 by Jeremy Austin

Let’s forget all this nonsense about television actors on stage - Catherine Tate has a long career on stage, even if those whose cultural touchstone is Heat only heard about her when she started being ‘bovvered’.

Here, she is well cast and delivers. Her Central School of Speech and Drama background is more than enough to enable her to play right up to a part that could almost have been written for her.

Tate plays Michelle, one of six vaguely linked, emotionally stunted teachers who appear in three duologues. David Eldridge’s play relies heavily on structure, but that does not get in the way of his story-telling - either during the three mano a mano moments or the overall story that threads its tragic way through the piece.

All casting is spot on, although this is such a tightly-written piece it would suit many actors. It’s all about love, actually, and in two out of three cases, how not to do it.

We’ve Chris O’Dowd and Lisa Dillon as the manipulative Nick and unrequited Helen. Theirs is the story that threads its way through. A night of confession in the kitchen, three years of repressed feelings coming to the boil - the performances say it all. Anna Mackmin’s direction helps the performers find both awkwardness and intimacy.

Tate is Michelle, the staffroom bike, Dominic Rowan is Graham, a man who would like to be one of her cyclists but is too hamstrung by his shyness to do more than listen to her list her sexual conquests during their theatre trips. Tate does the Essex brassiness that she does so well, Rowan is a little too good looking for the mousy master. David Mitchell might have been better but, good Lord, he’s another telly face.

The final pair represent tenderness and the idea that love has no boundaries. Francesca Annis is Anne, the gentle, glamorous older teacher who has enjoyed platonic holidays away with brash former colleague Robert (Nigel Lindsay). Theirs is the opposite relationship to that of Nick and Helen. There, Nick allowed Helen’s infatuation to put him in charge, here Anne has no idea that Robert is in love with her - the revelation resulting in a tenderness that is the polar opposite of the violence in Nick and Helen’s relationship.