There is always an excitement at being in Wilton’s, the most beautifully ravaged theatre in London. The difficulty is to find a play that is as bewitching as its barley sugar pillars, wood mouldings, its flitting acrobatic and musical ghosts.
Britten in Brooklyn is not that piece. Playwright Zoe Lewis has lit on a piquant real-life episode. The coming together in a Brooklyn brownstone townhouse during the second world war of Benjamin Britten, Wystan Auden, Carson McCullers and – blimey – Gypsy Rose Lee. But as so often, big names flatten dialogue. Watching Oli Rose’s listless production is like being at a bullying dinner party at which “interesting” guests plonk themselves down without justifying their claims to importance.
You know they are bohemian because they run around shrieking and drinking. Oh, and Carson McCullers (“Is that the Carson I just met?” twitters Britten) often sits in the bath. You know they are artists because they go on about being blocked and say things like “that’s what art is”. You know they are in the 30s because they look up from the paper and explain: “There’s something going on… close to genocide.”
Sadie Frost is an improbable Gypsy Rose Lee. Alluring but rigid. Her gestures seem to come from nowhere, as if tacked on like embroidery to her rather gorgeous outfits (pyjama-style two piece, lace-trimmed knickers). She flings her arms and legs around as if she were trying to get rid of them and tips her feet up as if parodying an Egyptian dance. Nothing suggests a woman who could strip as if she were peeling a banana. Ryan Sampson is a sweet Britten. Ruby Bentall brings her intriguing wariness to McCullers. But for much of the time she looks as if she is watching a horror movie. Understandably. Let’s hope Wilton’s comes up with something better later this month when it stages Adam Guettel’s marvellous bluegrass musical Floyd Collins.
