Quartermaine's Terms - Richmond Theatre (Review)
Review by David Munro
QUATERMAINE’S Terms is set in the staff room of the Cull-Loomis school for teaching English to foreigners at Cambridge in the early 1960.
All the staff appear to be bound up in their personal concerns and problems, other than the eponymous veteran teacher, St John Quartermaine (a brilliant performance by Nathaniel Parker), who seems content to live his life out in the staff room in his comfortable chair (in which we find him before the play opens).
He is a lonely man; suffering increasingly from memory loss; wishing to be friends with everyone, he manages to please no-one and becomes more self-effacing as the play continues.
When he is finally dismissed at the end of the play one wonders whether his passing will even be noticed by his self-absorbed colleagues – beneath the banal chatter of the staff room lies the fact that, in reality, all the staff members are totally self-absorbed and care nothing for their compatriots.
For example, none of them can even get the name right of the relative newcomer Derek Meadle (a very funny performance by Joe Hill) even though he has been there a year.
Although the play is, on the surface a comedy, with a plethora of funny one-liners, under the veneer of comedy lies the tragedy of the failure of human relationships. The staff room represents a microcosm of a society whose members are unable to communicate with one another and appear to have a total inability to love or feel real emotion.
There is Anita (Rosanna Lavelle), who has husband problems; Mark Sackling (Hal Fowler), a failed novelist deserted by his family; Henry Windscape (Christopher Timothy), an academic with a ruthless streak beneath a woolly exterior; Melanie (Victoria Wicks), who may or may not be a matricide and finally Loomis (Charles Kay), the co-owner of the school who delivers Quartermaine his coup de grace – all of whom give excellent performances.
Although the play has a Chekhovian feeling (as the author hints in the script) it reminded me more of the stately English comedies which used to play at the Haymarket with an all-star cast, where nothing much happened on stage and anything potentially interesting occurred off.
Nonetheless, it is well directed by Harry Burton and both he and the cast give the author full value for money.
I was, however, left wondering whether this mannered and leisurely play really has a place in the 21st Century. Certainly, for those who enjoy well crafted plays, impeccably acted, it’s a worthwhile evening but I can’t help feeling it is really a museum piece; an example of a theatrical style which died with the century and is now of only academic interest. It will be interesting to see how it fares in the West End. I wish it well though and, academic interest or not, this is not a production that any theatre lover should miss.
Quartermaine’s Terms by Simon Gray
Directed by Harry Burton.
Designer – Simon Scullion.
Costume – Tom Rand.
Lighting – Mark Howett.
Sound – Ian Horrocks-Taylor.
CAST: Nathaniel Parker; Christopher Timothy; Joe Hills; Victoria Wicks; Hal Fowler; Charles Kay; Rosanna Lavelle.
Richmond Theatre, The Green, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 IQJ.
Mon, June 2 – Sat, June 7, 2008.
Evenings: 7.45pm/Matinees Wed. & Sat: 2.30pm
Box Office: 0870 060 6651