While the Sun Shines
Orange Tree Theatre
Reviewed – 25th November 2021
★★★★
“Paul Miller’s direction is most assured in the fast-paced, boot-stamping physical moments”
An English sailor, American bombardier and French lieutenant walk into a room. Soon they are sleeping together, playing craps for a Duke’s daughter and arguing for cross-border consensus on that timeless question echoing across dancefloors: what is love. There are plenty of belly laughs, but the unique achievement of this production (a revival from 2019) is in pulling through the real emotional stakes of muddling through relationships in your twenties. Amidst designer Simon Daw’s period design, costumes, hair are characters pleading to know the difference between loving someone and being in love. Sally Rooney eat your heart out.
Philip Labey as the Earl of Harpenden – a wonderfully smarmy Algernon Moncrieff type – is the vehicle for much of this. Where most of writer Terence Rattigan’s characters are comic stocks of military bravado or sheltered naivete, Labey has to run the gamut from diminutive camp drollery to genuine insecurity and back to loving earnestness. He shares a clean sense of comedic timing with Michael Lumsden (his military father in law) and both – with the help of dialect coach Emma Woodvine – have delightfully aristocratic accents down pat.
Conor Glean’s Mid-Atlantic is, unfortunately, not as effective. He has the hulking, rugby-player’s physicality for Lieutenant Mulvaney, but his dialogue proves a stumbling block. He is dealt a tough hand from Rattigan – a script chock-a-block with ‘gee’s ‘darn’s and ‘see ya’s – but Glean’s inflection comes off all too often like Goofy, not an irresistible love-interest. It’s not that When the Sun Shines is exactly a case-study in dramatic realism, but it feels like the accent becomes a distraction: to the audience and Glean himself.
It might not be so obvious if his foil – Jordan Mifsúd’s French lovebird – wasn’t so forcibly funny. His accent isn’t a masterpiece of authenticity either, but he masterfully paints the picture of trembling, white-hot, Parisian passion. It’s a wonderfully idiosyncratic performance, teasing out snickers from the audience even while he forms the background to dialogue he isn’t a part of.
Most importantly, Mifsúd is a key part of the gathering momentum which drives this production home. Paul Miller’s direction is most assured in the fast-paced, boot-stamping physical moments: when the men pile out Harpenden’s room like a clown car, or Mulvaney and Lady Elizabeth Randall (played with burbling naivete by Rebecca Collingwood) drunkenly dance in the living room. There is a general sense of acceleration, checked only by a few moments of romance; these are managed movingly and it is refreshing to see an Intimacy Director, Yarit Dor, on the list of creatives.
Daw’s set is a simple, effective vehicle for these changes of pace: between a drinks cabinet, sofa and table he leaves enough space for Miller to block actors so that the audience never loses sight in the round. Lighting by Mark Doublebay doesn’t have much to do in a sitting room setting, but he squeezes in a charming window effect, which has the stage pooling with sunlight convincingly.
It’s not exactly the radical subversion of gender promised in the programme notes, but it does achieve something unique for a farce. In the intimate Orange Tree Theatre, Miller’s pulls off meaningful relationships between characters who are not all stereotyped and at the same time delivers the frenetic, off-the-walls energy of West End mainstays like One Man, Two Guvnors. The only draw-back to squeezing that much energy into such a space? John Hudson (a quiet star as Harpenden’s butler) literally bounces off a wall as he runs offstage and misses the curtain call with a bloody nose.
Reviewed by Daniel Shailer
Photography by Ali Wright
While the Sun Shines
Orange Tree Theatre until 8th January
Other shows reviewed this month:
Abigail’s Party | ★★★★ | Park Theatre | November 2021
Brian and Roger | ★★★★★ | Menier Chocolate Factory | November 2021
Footfalls and Rockaby | ★★★★★ | Jermyn Street Theatre | November 2021
Hedda Gabler | ★★★ | The Maltings Theatre | November 2021
Indecent Proposal | ★★★★★ | Southwark Playhouse | November 2021
La Clique | ★★★★★ | Christmas in Leicester Square | November 2021
Le Petit Chaperon Rouge | ★★★★ | The Coronet Theatre | November 2021
Little Women | ★★★★ | Park Theatre | November 2021
Marlowe’s Fate | ★★★ | White Bear Theatre | November 2021
Six | ★★★★ | Vaudeville Theatre | November 2021
The Choir of Man | ★★★★★ | Arts Theatre | November 2021
The Good Life | ★★ | Cambridge Arts Theatre | November 2021
The Sugar House | ★★★★ | Finborough Theatre | November 2021
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike | ★★★ | Charing Cross Theatre | November 2021
Blue / Orange | ★★★★★ | Royal & Derngate | November 2021
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