| It
was a dark and stormy night. I had a good book. The fire was
roaring. Greytown was half an hour's cold drive away. Still,
duty called, and out I went. And, I have to say, if the fire
and the book had won I'd have missed one of the funniest,
most moving, most luminous pieces of theatre I've seen anywhere
in the world.
Where has
this actor been all our lives? An expatriate Yorkshire
woman, thirty years in New Zealand and, as she explained
afterward, proud to be a New Zealand citizen, Eileen Appleton-Maher
gathered an audience of some eighty into her world in a
tour de force of intimate theatre right from the opening
lines of Bennett's Bed Among the Lentils ("Geoffrey's
bad enough... I'm glad I wasn't married to Jesus...")………
Bed Among the Lentils
is essentially a monologue.... But Eileen Appleton-Maher
succeeds in turning it into a full play, the rather stereotypical
cast of English village characters, notably the ghastly
Mrs. Frobisher and the even more revolting Geoffrey, springing
vividly to life, though we never see them.
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This
actor is a master of accent and dialect, and her amazingly
mobile face and expressive eyes do wonderful things
for the audience in intimate theatre of this nature. Bennett's
endless but never irritating witticisms, delivered
with perfect timing as in silky, dry and utterly beautiful
a voice as I've ever heard, weave a story of loneliness
and alienation which remains at the same time completely accessible,
recognisable and bitter-sweet. Susan, as portrayed by Eileen
Appleton-Maher, will stay with me as one of theatre's most
memorable characters.
A Lady of Letters: this piece,
too, was funny, moving and special.
Why? My feel is that
Eileen Appleton-Maher herself is pretty damn extra-special.
She certainty has an almost spiritual affinity
with the writing of Alan Bennett, perhaps because of the
common Yorkshire background. I'd love to see her take on
Coward's Madame Arcati, though. And I bet she'd make a great
go of Jenny Shipley if they were ever lucky enough to inveigle
her on to Telelaughs!
- Jane Melser
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