Review: THE WIND AND THE RAIN, Finborough Theatre

When Merton Hodge wasn’t working as an anaesthetist in London, he was writing plays. A rather prolific writer, everything considered, his play The Wind and the Rain ran for a few years at St Martin’s Theatre before the Second World War. Eight decades since it was last seen on a professional stage, Geoffrey Beevers brings back the 30s delight at Finborough Theatre in a production that’s traditional in every sense. It’s a piece of its time, one that continuously tows the line of comedy and displays a good dose of period-accurate sexism.

It follows young Charles Tritton as he moves to Edinburgh to study medicine, much like Hodge himself did in his youth. He boards at Mrs McFie’s house with three others: Gilbert (the eternal student, vintage party animal, and experienced rake), John, serious and studious, and Paul, the thoughtful French postgraduate who’s after a fellowship. When Charles meets Anne, his plans to move back to London to start a life with his childhood sweetheart, Jill, come to a jolting halt.

There are a handful of delectable performances, spearheaded by Mark Lawrence as the charming posh rascal Gilbert. He's confident in the humorous side of his role and the flamboyance of it all, swaggering onto Beevers’s scene and taking over with determined strokes of flair. He has a playful push-and-pull relationship with Jenny Lee’s landlady. With an exquisite presence, Mrs McFie may command the home with strict judgement, but Lee adds a concealed aura of pride and care for the boys she hosts.

A definite highlight of the show comes in the shape of second-act Jill, portrayed by Helen Reuben as a perfectly mouthy and irreverent liberated woman who’s less-than-impressed when she finds Charles with another girl. She is the polar opposite of Naomi Preston-Low’s Anne. The first foxy and talkative, the latter demure and introspective, they hold the entire moral of the work, if we had to find one. Joe Pitts is Charles; scaredy and meek when he arrives in Edinburgh, he starts off too polite for his own sake. Pitts delivers an affected and somewhat theatrical part compared to the others, who tend to be more subtle and slender in their acts.

Harvey Cole and David Furlong conclude the main cast as the sensible John Williams and the sweet, emotionally intelligent Dr Paul Duhamel, while Lynton Appleton comes in all high cheekbones, judgy eyes, and long vowels as Charles’s rival, Jill’s paramour, only to turn on his heels and come back later as Peter Morgan, a young student that mirrors Charles’s experience when he first moved in. The performances are, at this point, stronger and more interesting than the plot itself.

Designed and styled by Carla Evans, the revival feels authentically stopped in time. She populates the sitting room with warm tones and lots of wood, while Richard Williamson’s lights enclose the traverse with a gloomy, cloudy atmosphere that simulates the Scottish weather well. Running long at over two hours, the script is a masterclass in small talk that could have been easily trimmed into something less plump. Lethargic scene changes reset the stage with slow movements in dim lighting, while the story revolves mainly around Charles’s indecision in regard to his future.

Fairly outdated morals go hand in hand with a strikingly modern laddish attitude, while the melodramatic ending eagerly awaits. It’s a relatively wordy and stuffy production, but it celebrates a neglected, forgotten playwright who had quite the knack for a witty response.

The Wind and the Rain runs at Finborough Theatre until 5 August.

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