Not for nothing has playwright David Storey been described as an English Chekhov. This sliver of a play, small in construction but big in heart, transposes some of the poetic realism of the great Russian writer to an English country garden in the 1970s. Here, the elderly Kitchen (Simon Molloy), a former politician who might have been party leader – were it not for one 25-minute speech and a 15-second interview – dreams of a childhood journey and insists he may soon defect to Moscow.
But he has plenty of excuse for behaving badly. He is clearly suffering some form of dementia and the English country garden has become a prison in which he is kept under constant surveillance by his loving but exasperated family. Many of those whom Kitchen has known are no longer there, his mind wanders, and yet somehow he seems more alive than his uptight daughter (Abigail Bond), her stuffed-shirt philanderer of a husband (Andrew McDonald) and the companion they have employed for him, Benson, who has the whiff of the Edwardian manservant. Even his granddaughter's poet fiance (Toby Manley) oozes respect rather than rebellion as if Kitchen's lifetime of radical politics has changed nothing. The English garden always remains the same, regardless of Molloy's desperate larkiness.
The meanings of this hour-long play may remain elusive, but we can't fail to understand its gesture. Molloy, bright-eyed and alert as an old fox in a part originally written for Ralph Richardson, brings just the right mixture of childish tantrum and spry twinkle to the role. Tim Newns's production has clearly been made on a shoestring, but it's a firm reminder of how Storey is a master of dramatising the unsaid.
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