BWW Reviews: BLIND DATE AND 27 WAGONS OF COTTON, Riverside Studios, November 6 2011

I have just heard a radio forum of three politicians talking about what should be done to support Greece (and Italy and Spain) in order that the Euro retains its footprint across 17 European nations.

There was much talk of "the market's" view, its reaction to political machinations, its power to reward and to punish. No speaker challenged the consensus that "the market" had these rights to act as it wished, no speaker suggested that "the market" should pay some price for having got us to where we are today, no speaker was invited to comment on the growing discontent with "the market's" unaccountable actions - discontent most obviously made manifest in the global Occupy Movement's increasing popularity.

As is so often the case, it falls to art, and art that has been around for some time, to raise questions and provide answers to questions that underlie a political crisis and suggest how we can get along together in difficult circumstances. Make and Bake's double bill of Deep South one-act plays, Horton Foote's Blind Date (1985) and Tennessee Williams' 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1946) - at the Riverside Studios until 13 November - offers two very different takes on how neighbours should behave towards each other.

Blind Date is set in the 1920s in a comfortable suburban home in which a married couple have found a way to rub along together talking to each other without ever really listening. But Aunt Dolores (Louise Templeton) is determined to set up a date for her house guest, moody teenage niece Sarah Nancy (Francesca Fenech). Geekish, nervous Felix (Sebastian Knapp - a dead ringer for Buster Keaton if ever there were one) is the "lucky" man selected after two previous boys ran off in a hail of insults.

Though Dolores is full of good intentions, her advice to Sarah Nancy is drawn from her own experience as a willowy, beautiful college girl, beauty queen of two yearbooks: Sarah Nancy is neither willowy nor beautiful, but she is at ease in her own company and just wants to be left alone. Poor Felix is not made welcome by his date and proves the butt of Sarah Nancy's sharp tongue and most ungenteel demeanour, much to her Aunt's disgust. Until, at last, the two gauche young people are left to find their own way of communicating, which may lack the chatter of Aunt Dolores and grunting asides of Uncle Robert (Ross Ericson) but proves eloquently effective for them.

27 Wagons Full of Cotton is a more serious work with any comedy only that of the darkest kind. Young, plump, giggly Flora (Francesca Fenech in a stage debut that marks her as an actor of some substance) is abused and manipulated by her much older, thuggish husband, Jake (Ross Ericson) who has something to hide. Enter Silva Vicarro (Sebastian Knapp looking more like Steve Buscemi this time) who discovers that the fire that destroyed his cotton gin may not have been accidental. His revenge for his neighbour's violation of Roosevelt's much trumpeted Good Neighbour Policy underlines just how ineffective the communication between husband and wife can be and how much pain those who are strong and ruthless can inflict on those who are weak and foolish.

In director Suresh Patel's superb programme notes, he draws out comparisons between the old American plays and the recent London riots and they're there for all to see. But neither of these works are polemics - they are the products of master dramatists working in minature all the better to explore big questions through claustrophobic family scenes.    

To post a comment, you must register and login.