Bringing Lillian Hellmann’s favourite play, The Autumn Garden, to the London stage for the first time, Anthony Bigg's production is a delight.I was particularly impressed by how each of the cast owned their space and delivered Hellmann’s words with conviction and a true understanding of the 1940s South that they were inhabiting. This made me feel like I was sitting there in that world with them — a great achievement.
The story takes place over the course of one week at Constance Tuckerman's boarding house on the Gulf Coast. Where a group of guests find themselves entangled in each other’s regrets and disappointments around life and the matters of the heart.
Across the board, this play has been cast very well, with all the actors embodying their characters inner tempo and life with confidence. However a special mention must be made to mark Healy as the gregarious, charming and very much disenchanted Nick. He kept the energy of the play up and alive with such charisma and a dedication to exploring the multi layered aspects of his character. It runs at three hours long and although I enjoyed the slow paced quality of Hellmann’s world, she created a wonderful fire cracker in the character of Nick to keep the audience on their toes.
The Jermyn Street theatre has minimal space and Gregor Donnelly has designed a set very cleverly so as to use every spare part of the stage. I particularly loved the use of a piano and the live playing that brought a calm to the space.
All of the ruminating of these characters and their stories is so well played out. A real command of the stage is taken by the cast and makes it impossible not to be drawn in to the world of these flawed hearts.
The idea of using a murder ballad as the basis of a musical is an unusual concept and I was interested in how this was going to to work on stage within the musical theatre format. My preconception was that although murder ballads make great 4-minute songs, how is this going to work as a 90 minute musical? I need not have worried, we are clearly told at the beginning that the story will simply follow the format of these obsessive songs, and ‘in all great murder ballads, when songs of love-gone-wrong are sung, blood must be spilled, but by who?’ So as the love story begins, I know how it must end.