QUARTERMAINE’S TERMS
Can Rowan Atkinson ever shake off the shadow of Mr Bean? Alas, his return to the stage in the very straight role of a pathetic school teacher in Simon Gray’s Quartermaine’s Terms suggests not.
It’s partly that that rubbery, toady face of his with its lizard-like flicking tongue and eyes that can look in two directions simultaneously is unmistakably the old Bean. Partly that the only new expression he manages is a dreamy vacancy, which does indeed suggest the void that is Quartermaine’s life. But little more.
Atkinson’s school teacher begins the play rooted in a brown leather chair in the dreary brown common room of the Cambridge language school in the early 1960s. And during the course of two-and-a-half hours he barely leaves his seat, but, more important, he goes nowhere emotionally.
It’s clear that he’s always been a useless teacher. He doesn’t notice what nationality his pupils are, or know their names and occasionally spends whole lessons in silence – even during the dictation class. He’s harmless enough, but a bore.
As one teacher remarks, he has never allowed the outside world ‘to impinge’ on him. For this play to command one’s attention he should slowly but surely come to the tragic realisation that he too has wholly failed to impinge on the world, and in doing so, tug unbearably on one’s heartstrings. Atkinson’s Quartermaine merely strains one’s patience.
Fortunately there is much to enjoy from the superbly detailed performances from the rest of the staff room in Richard Eyre’s affectionate revival, which reveals the play as an acutely observed study of quintessentially English repression. The irony here is that these teachers are supposed to be imparting not just the English language but something of the English culture and yet none of them is capable of expressing their true feelings and lost any self-editing skills donkey’s years ago. And yet all are nursing private agonies.
Indeed, one of the pleasures of this play is that the unseen people causing their distress are brought to as much life as those on stage. There’s Melanie’s monstrous bully of a mother; Anita’s philandering husband, Nigel; Tommy, the power behind the throne of Malcolm Sinclair’s bumbling gay headmaster; and the entire increasingly dysfunctional family of the irrepressible Henry (a skipping Conleth Hill). Atkinson, however, is the gaping emotional hole in the middle of what might have been something truly moving.
Until 13 April, Wyndham’s Theatre, London WC2: 0844-482 5120, www.delfontmackintosh.co.uk
It’s partly that that rubbery, toady face of his with its lizard-like flicking tongue and eyes that can look in two directions simultaneously is unmistakably the old Bean. Partly that the only new expression he manages is a dreamy vacancy, which does indeed suggest the void that is Quartermaine’s life. But little more.
Atkinson’s school teacher begins the play rooted in a brown leather chair in the dreary brown common room of the Cambridge language school in the early 1960s. And during the course of two-and-a-half hours he barely leaves his seat, but, more important, he goes nowhere emotionally.
It’s clear that he’s always been a useless teacher. He doesn’t notice what nationality his pupils are, or know their names and occasionally spends whole lessons in silence – even during the dictation class. He’s harmless enough, but a bore.
As one teacher remarks, he has never allowed the outside world ‘to impinge’ on him. For this play to command one’s attention he should slowly but surely come to the tragic realisation that he too has wholly failed to impinge on the world, and in doing so, tug unbearably on one’s heartstrings. Atkinson’s Quartermaine merely strains one’s patience.
Fortunately there is much to enjoy from the superbly detailed performances from the rest of the staff room in Richard Eyre’s affectionate revival, which reveals the play as an acutely observed study of quintessentially English repression. The irony here is that these teachers are supposed to be imparting not just the English language but something of the English culture and yet none of them is capable of expressing their true feelings and lost any self-editing skills donkey’s years ago. And yet all are nursing private agonies.
Indeed, one of the pleasures of this play is that the unseen people causing their distress are brought to as much life as those on stage. There’s Melanie’s monstrous bully of a mother; Anita’s philandering husband, Nigel; Tommy, the power behind the throne of Malcolm Sinclair’s bumbling gay headmaster; and the entire increasingly dysfunctional family of the irrepressible Henry (a skipping Conleth Hill). Atkinson, however, is the gaping emotional hole in the middle of what might have been something truly moving.
Until 13 April, Wyndham’s Theatre, London WC2: 0844-482 5120, www.delfontmackintosh.co.uk