Barefoot in the Park

At the Chesil Theatre, the patrons walk off the street straight into the auditorium, so the first job for the production of Barefoot In The Park is to convince the audience that they are six stories up, looking into an unfurnished New York apartment in the 1960s.  The set was beautifully executed.  It is supposed to be a cramped apartment, even so, a lot of thought and work had gone in to fitting it into the Chesil stage, complete with three practical doors, two of which gave the audience views of what was beyond: the entrance corridor stage right and the bathroom upstage left.  Above the stage, there was a sloping ceiling, complete with the requisite broken skylight.

The apartment has been rented at great expense by Corrie Bratter (Aila McVey), unseen by her straight-laced lawyer husband Paul (Michael Leckie).  Part of the comedy comes from the newlyweds tying to come to terms with each other and with their circumstances, the rest from their interactions with a couple of tradesmen (Jim Glaister and Peter Walker) and with Corrie’s mother, Ethel, and their neighbour Victor Velasco.  Ethel (played to great effect by Lucy Moore) is written as a bit of a comic caricature - a neurotic character blown-up larger than life into something resembling the archetypal Jewish mother.  Victor is an oddity: a lothario who claims to mix in high society, yet is so far behind with his rent that he has to dodge the landlord by going through the Bratters’ apartment and over the roof (visible through the broken skylight) to get into his apartment in secret.  Eric Petterson played Victor with a completely believable charm, so that it seemed quite natural that he should organise extravagances and graciously allow everyone else to pay.

I’m slightly wary of my disconnect (time and place) with Neil Simon’s plays - and indeed, a couple of references to 1960s American popular culture drew laughs from part of the audience, but passed me by completely - however the performances of all the actors brought the comedy to life, and I thoroughly enjoyed the production.

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