Date: Fri 12-Sep-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: DONNAM

Quick Words:

Talking-Heads-Players-theatre

Full Text:

(rev "Talking Heads" @Town Players, 9/12/97)

Theatre Review-

"Talking Heads" By Town Players Moving And Entertaining Work

By Julie Stern

I first saw parts of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads was on Public Television,

which is only fitting since it was originally written for and produced by the

BBC. The title comes from the fact that the three short stories that make up

the whole are done as dramatic monologues, and much of the time all the

audience sees is the protagonist's face, filling up the TV screen. There is no

scenery, no distance shots, no music; it could just as easily be radio.

The Town Players of Newtown have made Bennett's monologues its newest

undertaking. The staged performance opened last Friday, and continues until

September 27.

A good dramatic monologue tells a story from two very different angles: The

limited viewpoint of the speaker, and the broader perspective one gets when we

read between the lines and see the character as the author means us to. The

irony of the contrast is what creates dramatic tension and makes a portrait

memorable.

Playwright Bennett, who began his career acting with Dudley Moore and Jonathan

Miller in the British revue Beyond the Fringe , has a fine sense of the

nuances of human personality, mixing pathos with droll humor in his depiction

of hapless, lonely people confronting the emptiness of their existence.

Under Mary Poile's direction, the Town Players have done a terrific job in

bringing this challenging work to the stage as a three-act play. Deirdre

Seeley, Damien Langan and Evelyne Thomas each take their turn as one of life's

losers:

Susan, the vicar's wife who is so alienated by her husband's relentlessly

cheerful enthusiasm for his job, turns to alcohol and adultery for escape;

Graham, the intellectual crippled by mental illness, whose emotionally

dependent relationship with his elderly mother is threatened by the

reappearance of her old boyfriend, brushes him off with the terse advice to

"get a life!"; and

Doris, the elderly widow who is forced to confront her life after an

accidental fall reduces her to physical helplessness.

This show succeeds in being both moving and entertaining, and is definitely

worth a trip to the Little Theater.

(Contact Town Players at 270-9144. Curtain is Friday and Saturday at 8:30 pm;

all tickets are $10.)