The Stage

A Voyage Round My Father

Published Thursday 9 September 2010 at 12:06 by Lesley Bates

As the autumn season’s opening production, John Mortimer’s autobiographical play is as soothing as a cup of cocoa.

First staged in 1970, nine years after his father’s death, this memory play sees Son (an engaging performance from Ryan Kiggell) travel through life seeking paternal approval, but it’s a journey that takes him round rather than towards his father.

Jamie Glover’s directorial debut for Salisbury Playhouse ensures it’s both funny and moving - and says as much about loneliness and loss as filial love.

Mortimer Snr was, by his son’s account, every bit as tricky and irascible as Horace Rumpole, but it’s difficult to see Paul Shelley’s mischievous eccentric as any kind of ogre, despite his monstrous selfishness and lack of tact.

He conducts earwig hunts with childlike glee, regales his son with the juicier elements of the divorce cases he undertakes and demonstrates a touching vulnerability, almost panic, when he finds himself helplessly alone when dressing.

No one mentions his blindness yet the tension in the auditorium when Jeany Spark’s forthright Elizabeth refuses to go along with the family charade and confronts his lack of sight is tangible.

Polly Adams does a fine job as Mother, willingly walking on egg shells around her testy husband.

Playing multiple roles, others in the cast can only offer thumbnail sketches from shell-shocked tutors hurling books and Sapphic neighbours canoodling on the hill to long-suffering judges and cockney ATS girls.

All do well, but William Oxborrow’s series of cameos is particularly strong.

And special mention should be made of the three youngsters from the Playhouse’s youth theatre - Simon Jagoe, Ollie Spurr and Miranda Mackay on press night - who acquit themselves admirably.

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