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The Lady in the Van
By Alan Bennett
Directed by Kristina Schramm
Produced by Lincoln Square Theatre
4754 N. Leavitt
Chicago, IL
Call 773-275-7930, tickets $15
Thursdays thru Saturdays at 8 pm
Sundays at 6 pm
Running time is 1 hour, 50 minutes with intermission
Through September 30, 2007
“The smell is sweet, with urine only a minor component, the prevalent odor suggesting the inside of someone’s ear. Dank clothes are there too, wet wool and onions, which she eats raw, plus what for me has always been the essence of poverty, damp newspaper.”
-- Alan Bennett, The Lady in the Van
Autobiographical memory play plods along into boredom
British playwright Alan Bennett’s (Fred Wellisch) autobiographical memory play about an odiferous, cantankerous and paranoid old lady living in a run-down van simply bored me from the start. The only glue holding this work together is the fact that it is a true story. Bennett did allow Miss Shepard (Joy Thorbjornsen-Coates) to park her van (that she lived in) in his garden for three months that turned into fifteen years (until her death). So what, I asked myself. She smells from urine and poor personal hygiene; she is argumentative, unfriendly and she hears the voice of the Blessed Virgin. Is that a reason to have her live in your garden?
With Bennett narrating and commenting throughout, the show is really a series of anecdotes. The Lady in the Van moves so slowly that we never get fully engaged. We don’t connect with Bennett as Fred Wellisch plays the British playwright as a weak and indecisive nerd. We never understand why he allowed the lady to utilize his garden since she only irritates him and prevented him from concentrating on his writing. Why not just let her alone, leave her in her van on the street? Once we learn that his mother is in a nursing home, Alan must need someone to care about? I guess? The lack of reasoning turned me off. Was he lonely? It is never made clear why he cared since he was always saying how uncaring a person he was.
Joy Thorjornsen-Coastes’ performance as the eccentric and mysterious upper middle class lady has its moments. Unfortunately, the same antics and moods—from friendly to nasty without any remorse were repeated to the point of redundancy. I never empathized nor cared for the lady and I felt that Bennett was too weak a person to evict her. This became a co-dependency relationship that I didn’t care about. Not much happens and the mystery of the lady’s past in never completely explained.
The slow pace and the many monologues wore me out. A cut of 20 minutes would serve the show nicely. The British accents were all over the place, especially from Marie Goodkin as Mam. The show is billed as a comedy but I found little humor. John Arthur Lewis and Diana Edwards, both in multiple roles, added excellent work. The failure for me to connect with the two main characters made for a long tedious evening.
Not Recommended
Tom Williams
Tom99@chicagocritic.com for comments
Talk Theatre in Chicago podcast
Date Reviewed: September 4, 2007
Review of The Lady in the Van by Randy Hardwick
The Smell in the Van
The Lady in the Van is Alan Bennett’s autobiographical tale of his encounter with the cantankerous and odiferous Miss Shepherd, an indigent woman who lives in a van and regularly converses with the Blessed Virgin Mary. As the play develops Miss Shepherd (Joy Thorbjornsen-Coates) first moves her van into Bennett’s (Fred A. Wellisch) street, then in front of his neighbors’ house and ultimately into Bennett’s own garden, where she remains for over 15 years. As the years pass, Bennett’s relationship with Miss Shepherd transforms from one of condescending compassion to a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God realization that not only are he and Miss Shepherd alike, but also that Miss Shepherd is – at least in some quirky ways – the braver, more noble of the pair. The 1989 book was an enormous literary success for Bennett which he later adapted for the stage.
True to form, Bennett, who is best known in the U.S. for film versions of his work (The Madness of King George, History Boys), provides The Lady in the Van with a generous dose of British wit and humor. Unfortunately, the pacing of director Kristina M. Schramm’s production turns his dry and droll lines into near sleep-inducing banality. On opening night, the show ran some 15 minutes longer than the advertised length and everyone in the audience was shifting in their seats. If the pace can be picked up a bit, this show may yet be popular with Bennett fans, but on the night I saw it, The Lady in the Van was a real yawner.
Wellisch and Thorbjornsen-Coates deliver adequate performances in the lead roles, but they get little help from the supporting players and none whatsoever from the technical side of the production. Marie Gordon as Bennett’s aging and failing mother slides all over Europe with an annoying range of accents while John Arthur Lewis and Diana Edwards serve up seven thinly differentiated characters, none of which ring particularly true. There are severe limits on what one can do technically in such a low, church-basement space, but the unrelentingly subtle nature of The Lady in the Van’s humor desperately needs visual support of some kind. In this production, the squalor of Miss Bennett’s garden existence is all out of sight and her final-scene ascent into heaven is reduced to a ghostly apparition supported only by her off-white frock. Schramm seems to have underestimated the difficulty of this work on a variety of levels.
The show does, however, deliver some quite good – though widely scattered – moments between Bennett and Miss Shepherd. Assuming that the pace can be picked up, there is enough chemistry between the leads to make it a worthwhile venture for die-hard Bennett fans.
SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED
Date Reviewed: September 4, 2007
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