One would be forgiven for thinking that Somerset Maugham’s powerful anti-war drama For Services Rendered was an odd choice by The Lace Market Theatre to commemorate the centenary of the start of World War 1. When so many theatres, both professional and amateur, are featuring R.C. Sherriff’s masterpiece Journey’s End or David Haig’s tear-jerker My Boy Jack in their respective seasons, the decision to mount this lesser-known piece was a brave one.
Di Richards’s direction is satisfactory, but such a word-laden piece would have benefited from a subtler touch in places.
Maugham’s three-act play is set entirely in the drawing room of the middle-class Ardsley family in September 1932, and examines the tensions in the lives of Mr Ardsley, a country solicitor, his wife, their three daughters, their only son and an array of family friends. Fourteen years after the Armistice, all still bear the scars of the Great War, whether physically, such as the blind ex-officer Sydney, or mentally, such as his restless sister Eva, who continues to grieve for the fiancé she lost on the battlefield. With twelve cast members to cram onstage, credit must be given to set designer Catherine Hellyer for creating a functional and period-appropriate backdrop to the action. Martin Curtis’ lighting and sound design is as imaginative as the constraints of naturalism allow, and Max Bromley’s and Doreen Sheard’s costumes do much to brighten up the stage.
The Lace Market Theatre must be applauded for its boldness in tackling this demanding piece.
Maugham’s exposé of what he regarded as British upper-class complacency is blistering, and requires stellar performances across the board to keep the audience engaged; in the original 1932 production at the Globe Theatre actress Flora Robson, as Eva, apparently gave the performance of her career. In this production there is generally fine work from the men, notably Robert Suttle as the love-struck Wilfred Cedar and Malcolm Todd as bawdy alcoholic Howard Bartlett, but the women frequently seem self-conscious in the glare of audience. Di Richards’s direction is satisfactory, but such a word-laden piece would have benefited from a subtler touch in places. The performance of the evening, however, comes from a terrific Chris Sims as the sightless Sydney, whose jovial sarcasm masks a bitter disillusionment with King and Country, a view that begins to infect many of the other characters as the play progresses.
The Lace Market Theatre must be applauded for its boldness in tackling this demanding piece; there are few amateur theatres that would have done so. Maugham’s piece is so complex, however, that it requires each member of the cast to search for the emotional subtext of every line, and this production’s lack of engagement with the intricacies of the text causes Maugham’s message to be transmitted in a rather fragmented fashion.
Laura Jayne Bateman
