Daily Mail, 9th
October 1998
The Peter Hall Company at the Piccadilly has done many fine things but non finer than this loving revival of one of the great Neapolitan comedies of Eduardo de Filippo.
The 1946 text is newly translated by Timberlake
Wertenbaker, whose name, methinks, is an approximate anagram of our old friends
Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, who did the last West End version, 20 years
ago, starring Joan Plowright and Frank Finlay.
That came with a touch of Franco Zeffirelli in the
night, and lots of Italianate fussiness.
Sir Peter, directing, plays it straight, and
emotionally unadorned. So do his matchless lead performers, Judi Dench and
Michael Pennington.
Filumena is a reformed prostitute who has married a
top local confectioner, Domenico, on her supposed deathbed. The play starts
with her waiting to sort out the nurse from Bologna who’s waiting to pounce on
the widower.
Dame Judi has many weapons in her armoury. Anger is
one of the most formidable. If looks could kill, poor old Domenico, not to
mention the nurse, were obliterated on their way from the dressing rooms.
Her rampaging vendetta has waited 25 years, and now
we hear about the three grown-up sons, one of whom Domenico sired.
One is a shirt-maker, one a budding writer, one a
plumber. They are splendidly played by John Gordon Sinclair, Laurence Mitchell
and Jason Watkins.
Apparently, they represent aspects of the
struggling post-war Italy, and their reconciliation a blueprint for the new
social order. The wedding is annulled on a technicality and rearranged ten
months later, when Domenico has to accept Filumena’s condition of not knowing
which son is his.
But their relationship is also to be re-defined. Mr
Pennington has done nothing better, or more delicate, than his slow thawing
from rigid paterfamilias to loving Dad. And Dame Judi, skittish as the breeze,
matronly as a mother hen and finally, like Niobe, all tears, gives one of her
classic performances of rich comic domination.
She grimaces in pinching shoes, and looks in mock
horror at the latest cowardly male confession. Does anyone know how she does
this, and break your heart? Not me.
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