Googie Withers Outstanding In Entertaining Play

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30108, 17 April 1963, Page 17

Googie Withers Outstanding In Entertaining Play

It would be a pity if any theatregoer, distracted by the variety of entertainment offering lately, were to miss seeing “Woman in a Dressing Gown,” They would miss a virtuoso performance by Googie Withers, and they would miss a highly entertaining play. Googie Withers’s portrayal of a middle-aged woman whose husband shatters her apparenty normal world with a request for divorce was the kind of performance which enables the live theatre to compete with its rivals. Miss Withers, helped at ail times by a talented cast, brought the audience together in sympathy with the woman-in-the-dressing-gown's situation, and held them through laughter, through tears, right up to the final curtain. Her vocal technique was remarkable—from a whisper which carried to the corners of the theatre, to a drunken shout in which the words were still quite distinct. Within seconds she had the audience laughing at a well-timed line, or gesture and then leaning forward, tense and sensitive to the pathos in a look; or an inflection in her voice.

Although Miss Withers justifies her star billing, the rest of the cast were equally convincing. The husband. Grant Taylor, had to be a small-time man who yet had sufficient personality to attract a young, intelligent secretary.

He did this by being responsive to his environment —slovenly, ageing, listless at home; but positive, ambitious and youthful when with his mistress. The confusion of the two aspects of his personality when he brought bis secretary to his home was movingly played. The son (Allen Bickford) acted with intensity and managed to do what is always so difficult—to convey a quick-tempered teen-ager who. in s»ite of his defensive offensiveness, is really very young and very vulnerable.

Some of the best scenes in the play were duologues. Gerda Nicolson, who was the secretary, had an excellent scene pleading with the weak-willed husband to press his wife for a divorce. And Monica Maughan, with Googie Withers provided one of the highlights of the play in the scene where the two of them drink a bottle of whisky, and, thus, encouraged, discuss men, analyse their common weakness and so explain them away.

The production, by Richard Campion, was quite unlike anything we have seen from Mr Campion in the past. There were no tricks, gimmicks or theatrical flourishes. Instead, a workmanlike production which flowed, unobtrusively but with professional efficiency, from beginning to end. There is no doubt that this is as polished a production as Christchurch has seen for some time. The play, by Ted Wallis, Is not quite as good as the pror duction. While the thetne of the play (is a man able to pack 20 years of married life into a suitcase, and walk away) was cleverly put, and always absorbing, the padding seemed at times to run counter in tone and intention to the more serious theme.

Throughout the evening, there was the feeling that this family crisis was more than a theatrical situation. It was life as we might all have to live it. The fact more than redeemed any structural deficiencies in the play. If the response of last night’s audience is any indication, the present production will have a tong and successful run in London, where it is scheduled to open later this year. It is indeed a memorable play with even more memorable performances. —P.R.S.