FringeReview UK 2024
The Silver Cord
Andrew Maunder in association with Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre
Genre: American Theater, classical, Drama, Fringe Theatre, Mainstream Theatre, Theatre
Venue: Finborough Theatre
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
The finest revival of any play all year and Sophie Ward as fiendishly manipulative matriarch Mrs Phelps gives the performance of her life. Sidney Howard’s 1926 The Silver Cord directed by Joe Harmston plays at the Finborough till September 28th.
Review
This is the finest revival of any play all year and Sophie Ward as fiendishly manipulative matriarch Mrs Phelps gives the performance of her life. Sidney Howard’s 1926 The Silver Cord directed by Joe Harmston plays at the Finborough till September 28th.
Howard is best-known for writing the screenplay Gone With the Wind, which was considerably more left-wing and critical before David O Selznick got others including Scott Fitzgerald to tone it down. Tragically Howard’s Oscar was posthumous: he was killed in a tractor accident at his farm. At his death he was at 48 one of the most successful Class of 47, including his fried Eugene O’Neill, three years his senior. The Silver Cord is arguably his masterpiece.
Fledgeling architect David Phelps (George Watkins) is visiting his mother with new bride, biologist Christina (Alix Dunmore), herself about to start work in New York at the Rockefeller Foundation. It should be an exuberant homecoming. David’s ‘artistic’ but stay-at-home brother Robert (Dario Coates) entertains fiancée Hester (Jemma Carlton). Just 20, she’s already uncertain of ambivalent 26-year-old Robert’s intentions, though head-over with him.
Christina at 29 has studied in Germany, and her independence, and psychological grasp far exceeds anyone else’s including her husband’s. We find out partly why. Even though Dave’s a year older they’re long past the age of permissions and should provide ballast to the younger couple.
Enter Mrs Phelps (Sophie Ward) master of soft-spoken python and homespun sophistries. Ward’s sibilance emits like a New England hiss.
Alex Marker set’s echoes this: a parqué floor of hexagonal wood design, beautifully inlaid, centres like a spider’s web. The room (briefly a bedroom as a window falls pat as a bed and up again) is decorated with turquoise walls and childhood images, and a high degree of 1920s chintz including porcelain tea-set and silver. The very deployment and neglect of teacups triggers the opening salvos. Mike Robertson’s lighting is suffused with wintry snow outside, and dimmed half-lights (occasionally these glare).
Amanda Priestley does something inspired in her sound: Amy Beach (whose birthday fell on press night, though born in 1867) is now the best-known New England composer of her time. Her piano and violin music trill through, echoes perhaps of Mrs Phelps’ youth and early widowhood; and perhaps tragic decision never to marry again.
Instead she funnels far too much ‘love’ into keeping her boys helplessly near her. Her first edict is that Christina should give up her fellowship and be allowed to “potter” in a local lab whilst ‘real’ doctors aren’t doing their work. Meanwhile Mrs Phelps has bought a huge plot of land where Dave can plan a whole township. And not chance his arm in a New York office. Christina immediately knows what she’s up against.
Meanwhile Mrs Phelps (significantly, we never learn her first name) is determined to prise Robert away from Hester, stating Hester doesn’t love him, nor he her. With disastrous results. Hester whilst spirited and bolstered by Christina’s act of saving her from despair, is only 20. Carlton emerges from sharp interjections through dumb grief to explosive fury in a heart-stopping performance.
Robert, who proves surprisingly fine at flower-arranging, is all too suggestible. He has a history of unsuitable woman, sexually available though courting disaster, but of course wholly out of the question. His real desires though are subtly intimated.
When Robert finally discovers some truths about his mother, it may be too late to break free. Coates emits a misery that is quite inward and palpable, bringing his unsympathetic character to a life of mute entreaties. Christina refers later to a mother consuming her children, and the preying-mantis motif is an absolute study here. Robert is almost consumed.
In a flawless cast much is demanded of Ward, in Mrs Phelps’ continual, malign delusions and conscious acts of hypochondria. Most emblematic of her manipulations is to tell each son they take after her, and the other feckless one like their ‘useless’ dead father. Who, 15 years her senior when she married at 20, she never loved. He left her rich though and you wonder in what way he was useless.
Dunmore is first exquisite in her finely-tuned politeness, then slowly, with infinite care, she tries revealing to an increasingly incredulous David the depth of his own delusions and Mrs Phelps’ above all. It isn’t that Christina wants to fight – though she does – she wants to make everyone understand and act without prejudice. The trope of scientist is continually brought up by her and against her. There’s a superb monologue about the selfless curiosity of Christian’s dead professor. Only Hester gets it.
Dunmore shifts through shades of anger through regret to a valedictory sense that she might lose her husband at a crucial time for her in several ways. Yet Dunmore’s Christina won’t bend to what would be emotional and marital as well as professional suicide. In a quietly blazing final scene Dunmore rivets us with a speech that flays into Ward’s Mrs Phelps, who herself rises with dignity to make a few final ripostes.
Watkins’ traversal is more complex than it seems. All bonhomie and independent bluster at the outset, he seems invulnerable. But at every impugning of his mother’s less-than-creditable behaviour, her quite vicious treatment of Hester, his reflexes are inexorably drawn back to the mother ship, as it were. Whereas one fears Robert is a lost cause, Robert shows some scale-dropped shrewdness after a doctor’s visit and a catastrophe involving Hester; and David increasingly sides with his mother. Watkins traces this like a cracked-open Frat boy pining for home.
Howard never makes this a misogynistic play: both the younger women are far the most sympathetic characters in it and the heroine is undoubtedly Christina, bit the anti-heroine clearly Mrs Phelps. The men are inert.
But this drama doesn’t let up. Just when you think all is sadly settled, there’s a further volte-face. A darkly thrilling masterpiece, given what might be its finest UK revival. All are outstanding and Dunmore, and certainly Ward, should be up for some glittering prizes.
Written by Sidney Howard, Directed by Joe Harmston, Set Design by Alex Marker, Lighting by Mike Robertson, Costume Design by Carla Joy Evans, Sound Designer by Amanda Priestley, Assistant Director Lydia Free, Casting Director Declan Walker, Stage Manager Ted Walliker, Producer Andrew Maunder
Assistant Producers Ellie Renfrew and Kit Thompson, Rehearsal Photography Jonathan Phang, Production Photography Carla Joy Evans, Set Painter Ian Black, Marketing Lal Yolgecenli
General Manager Caitlin Carr, Assistant General Managers Jillian Feuerstein, Lydia Free, Kit Thompson
Till September 28th
