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Reader rating
Dir: Anthony Page.
Cast: Vivienne Benesch, Jennifer Regan, Glenn Fleshler, Maggie Smith, Catherine McCormack, Robert Sella, Chris Larkin, Peter Francis James
Description: Edward Albee's drama, starring Maggie Smith, about a party that becomes less frivolous as the evening progresses, until an unexpected guest and her companion arrive. Directed by Anthony Page.
Trains: Tube: Piccadilly Circus 
Phone: 0870145 1171
Website: www.trh.co.uk
Emotional gravity: Peter Francis James with Dame Maggie Smith who plays the Lady with pathos and witty sophistication
How it mystifies and irritates, disturbs and affects, but leaves you in the dark - provoked and unsatisfied! This resurrected dance of death drama from Edward Albee's down-in-the-doldrums phase in the Eighties raises questions about illusion, reality and identity, but lasted just 12 performances on Broadway.
It is Dame Maggie Smith's undimmed allure, though, rather than Albee's play that will insure The Lady From Dubuque, in Anthony Page's otherwise poorly acted production, lasts far longer over here.
Dame Maggie discards most of her fabulous bag of comic manners and mannerisms to become the mysterious Lady, Elizabeth, radiant with wintry compassion and a flair for mocking disdain. She rediscovers that register of serious, heart-felt emotion she famously employed as a centenarian in Albee's Three Tall Women.
Her role is that of an Angel of Death, or Ministering Angel, who materialises towards the end of one evening in a Connecticut house.
The play itself hovers in that tantalising Albee territory, somewhere between American drawing room realism and symbolic fantasy.
Hildegard Bechtler's pale-grey walled, modernist set, with a Jasper Johns print hanging proud, ushers in a mood of worldly opulence. Here Catherine McCormack's thirtyish, pain-wracked Jo is close to cancer's gruelling end-stage, though that has not stopped her and husband, Robert Sella's nervy Sam, from holding a little drinks' party for close friends.
It is during this over-extended, aimless socialising that Jo chills the atmosphere by referring to death as if it were a permanent house-guest. She even encourages a bitchy atmosphere of back-biting and insults, chiefly directed against her old friend, Vivienne Benesch's innocuous Lucinda, and Glenn Fleshler's caricature red-neck Fred.
Only with the appearance of Dame Maggie's Elizabeth, who wears a dark-blue suit, pearls and an expression of almost sinister, smiling serenity does the play take off.
"Well then: We are in time. Yes: this is the place," Elizabeth exclaims to her black, karate black-belt companion, Peter Francis James's Oscar.
Screams of pain echo down the stairs and sound an ominous, preludic note for an eerie departure from realism. When Sam comes down for breakfast next morning and finds two strangers at large, his repeated, increasingly enraged question "Who are you?" finally elicits the weird response from Elizabeth.
"I have come for my daughter's dying," though there is no trace of Jo's mother with her pinkraised hair about the Lady From Dubuque. Yet in this extraordinary scene, when Jo drags herself down stairs, the magical happens: she falls child-like into Elizabeth's consoling arms, as if she were indeed her mother. Dame Maggie's beautiful performance, with its witty sophistication and grave pathos, gives the play a centre of emotional gravity.
Here lies the crux of things. Albee, who was adopted when young and never knew his parents, envisages identity as something fluid, that is created or transformed in us, according to the way other people see and need us. We become, he believes, what they want us to be. The Lady From Dubuque becomes like a wish-projection of the dying Jo.
Unfortunately Albee frames the play within repetitive, flippant inconsequential conversation-pieces for Sam, Jo and their friends who remain faint, outline figures, particularly rather camp male ones.
The production's practical problem is that Robert Sella cannot manage Sam's weeping collapses or convey his emotional breakdown, while Albee leaves too many big questions floating portentously in the air.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
I really enjoyed this play and it is always such a joy to watch Maggie. However I thought her accent was a bit strange...
- Mark, London
I was disappointed. Maggie Smith was stunning - lending great emotional depth and sincerity to an otherwise over-acted piece.
I personally thought Catherine McCormack was completely distracting and unbelievable. Too RADA - and "I am acting - look at me ACTING the pain". Similar thoughts about Robert Sella. It all felt very self indulgent and over-the-top. Like we were watching a bunch of actors demonstrating their ability to perform extreme emotions - but forgetting the one thing which makes audience warm to them - realism.
- Nick Harris, London, England
After reading some of the reviews I was slightly nervous about having paid so much for the tickets - however, having just seen it, this was an amazing production, a brilliantly performed meditation on identity and death, but which never comes across as pretentious or irritatingly vague. Catherine McCormack astonishes as the dying Jo: unsparingly unsentimental, harsh in the conveying of pain, and yet conspiratorial in talking to the audience. It's a true ensemble piece, but Maggie Smith moved the play into a different realm - from the bitter laughter of Act One to something more reassuring, more profound, and genuinely moving. Thanks to her, this brave play is in the heart of the West End (something which is quite amazing when you think that even the National probably wouldn't stage it - what is going to happen to the West End serious play when Dame Maggie retires?!). Yes, there are bits that don't quite work, but then I actually preferred the play as whole to A Delicate Balance (although I will always retain memories of Maggie's unforgettable Claire in that play). It's a play that provokes thought and will keep you thinking about it for days after.
- Paul Burditt, Leamington Spa, Warks
For me it was a wonderful evening in the theatre, a well written play, so well directed and acted. Dame Maggie is always a joy to watch but look for the performances from Catherine McCormack and Peter Francis James.
- D.K. Grant, Croydon, Surrey.
I'd hate to be an actor in any play Maggie Smith appears in because she'll outshine everyone on stage and is frequently the only thing remembered about a play's run. When she played Lady Bracknell a few years ago, even though the role itself was small, she wiped the floor with the rest of the cast and it caused resentment. I will admit that if I go and see a play Dame Maggie is in it's because of her. I really couldn't be bothered what the play was about. If she's in it then it's worth going to see because of her. Her presence is enough to make any play come alive. She's solid gold and is a national treasure.
- Paul Wilson, London, UK
