The Stage

Travels With My Aunt

Published Wednesday 10 February 2010 at 16:35 by Mary Redman

Fun is much needed to counteract grey February weather and fun is what we get from Graham Greene’s exotic creation, the unsinkable Aunt Augusta.

Marcus Webb, Sam Pay, and Elliot Harper in Travels with my Aunt at the Queen's Theatre Hornchurch Photo: Nobby Clark

This lady blithely sailing through her exciting life must be a very close, yet younger, relation to Auntie Mame, that other intrepid adventurer through life. We all should have such a daring, undaunted aunt.

Rodney Ford’s clever open stage design in cool shades of blue and teal, wonderfully lit by Chris Howcroft, conceals an enormous number of props from telephones, beds, hats and tea sets behind its built-in doors and cupboards. NB to costume - Queen Mary’s penchant was toques.

Long term Cut to the Chase member Liz Marsh’s successful Queen’s directorial debut is fast-paced and delightfully crafted with just four men on stage, including Simon Jessop’s frantic stage manager making noises from the innocuous to the frankly rude, while desperately keeping up with props, costumes and scene changes.

All in all Elliott Harper, Sam Pay and Marcus Webb play naif Henry Pulling and myriad, diverse male and female characters from Augusta’s exciting world of crime, intrigue and espionage in London, Paris, Istanbul and Egypt. This constraint means the cast do something they are known for - being tightly bonded and turning on a sixpence - as the headlong dialogue changes from one member to another even in mid sentence.

It’s the sort of inventive production that anyone with a drop of theatre in their blood revels in watching with glee. Civilians have a thoroughly enjoyable evening’s theatre.