With a bath on the billiard table and a garden resembling a jungle, aristocrat (and former model) Dorothy Stacpoole faces a desperate situation. The decaying family pile is close to ruin. And with the coffers all but empty, Dorothy must now choose between auctioning off the historic contents - or handing everything over to the National Trust. Read more …
Archdeacon June, her sister, is all for the Trust. But Dorothy loathes the idea of opening her home to the public: people spoil things, don’t they, trampling over history, gawking at family memories? The thought of flogging off the art and the heirlooms is equally unbearable. And there’s a third option, too: a shady, über-rich consortium is interested in buying the house and relocating it from Yorkshire to somewhere altogether more desirable. Like Dorset.
Whilst pondering which way to jump, Dorothy unexpectedly encounters a familiar face from her modelling days. Theodore, now a producer of “adult” films, is in search of the perfect period setting - and four poster bed - for his latest porn epic. And having a film crew about the place might distract Dorothy from the impossible decision she faces .
There's something quaintly Chekhovian about the first half of Bennett's play, brought jauntily to life by director Patrick Sandford.
Leaves the audience more than satisfied, and thoroughly entertained.
The clunky gear shift between exposition and farce underlines the grinding obviousness of Bennett’s approach to theatrical form.
Stanford’s production is something of a mixed bag overall, with erratic pacing and a large ensemble struggling to reconcile the play’s knockabout element with Bennett’s more thoughtful meditation on the ways in which history and heritage are increasingly treated as commodities.
Pitlochry Festival Theatre, Pitlochry from Thursday June 8, 2017, until Thursday October 12, 2017. More info: www.pitlochry.org.uk
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