Review: The Chalk Garden at the Wharf Theatre, Devizes (From This Is Wiltshire)

Review: The Chalk Garden at the Wharf Theatre, Devizes

10:39am Saturday 6th March 2010 in

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Whatever you say about the Wharf Theatre, Devizes' little amateur gem on the edge of the Kennet and Avon Canal, you certainly get a range of theatrical experience.

After Ben Elton's scatalogical farce Silly Cow, the theatre is currently offering Enid Bagnold's 1950s country house drama, The Chalk Garden.

Better known for the book National Velvet, made into a film starring a young Elizabeth Taylor in 1944, Bagnold is firmly in the tradition of the "well-made play" - as opposed to the well-written play.

Not to say that The Chalk Garden isn't extremely literate. The dialogue is lyrical, almost operatic, but still retains a lot of humour and well-observed human relations.

Mrs St Maugham wishes to hire a governess for her flighty granddaughter Laurel and the only applicant who stays round long enough for an interview is the mysterious Miss Madrigal (you only get names like that in plays of this vintage).

Miss Madrigal turns up trumps, not only establishing a healthy relationship with Laurel - who calls her "Boss" - but exudes an encyclopaedic knowledge of gardening.

She insists that most of the plants in the chalk garden are completely wrong and won't survive, which drives the invalid and bed-ridden butler - whom we never see - into an apoplectic fit from which he dies.

She also connives with Laurel's estranged mother, Olivia, with whom Mrs St Maugham has a volatile relationship, to be reconciled with her teenage daughter and the pair end up leaving to sail to Suez together.

Director Merrily Powell delivers a meticulous production. The set by Paul Butler is superb and the period costume is absolutely spot on.

The performances of the entire cast are accurate too. Angela Fawsett as Mrs St Maugham has the right blend of dotty grand dame and flinty resistance to change.

Allison Moore is fittingly mysterious as Miss Madrigal, the woman with a dark past that we almost but not quite find out about.

Peter Wallis is brilliant as the petulant manservant Maitland, and his relationship with Laurel particularly rings true.

As Laurel, Lizzie Lomax is sweet, almost too much so, and is pert rather than precocious, but a promising debut for all that.

And as estranged mum Olivia, Chellie Messenger brings on a cloud of sadness as she attempts against overwhelming odds to reclaim her lost child.

There is also excellent support from Joan Francis as the invalid butler's silent but disapproving nurse, Andrew Rae as the judge who sentenced Miss Madrigal in her previous incarnation and Sue Cripps as a reluctant applicant for the governess job.

The show continues until next Saturday.