Mr & Mrs A. Bartlett, Alan Herdman Pilates Studios, 42 The Dental Practice and Pieter Rogers (deceased) present
Spending the Pension
A new comedy written by Andrew Neil
Old Red Lion Theatre
5 – 23 February, 2008
 ary Couzens
A review by Mary Couzens for EXTRA! EXTRA!
It’s a rare thing to come across a play about everyday life with characters in it who are as warm and wise as Peggy (Anna Barry) and Wilson (Andrew Neil) in Andrew Neil’s (one and the same) Spending the Pension. Their often humorous, always human dialogue seems to inspire laughter of recognition with nearly every line, making the watching of this play a very enjoyable experience. Real life married couple Anna Barry and Andrew Neil play the pensioner wife and husband who form the main focus of Neil’s play, though the action of their amiable goings on is paralleled with that of a much younger newlywed couple, Deirdre and Gordon.
We join Peggy and Wilson in a church in Jerusalem where they are on holiday and we are instantly drawn into their interactions. Rough edged Scotsman Wilson’s chief reason for not socialising with the other pensioner couples on the bus, he tells his wife, is that he ‘can’t understand most of what the English are saying.’ His well-spoken English wife Peggy, who is enthralled by the grandeur of the church’s architecture, encourages him to forget about ‘beliefs’ or anything of that ilk when he assesses it, especially as he has already loudly proclaimed that he is fed up with those church c****. There is, always, one understands, pretty quickly, a certain amount of truth in Wilson’s irreverent ranting, as well as in his wife’s patient philosophising. But therein lays the intrigue in this couple’s altogether intriguing relationship. These two seemingly opposite, very likeable human beings have been happily married for seven years, having initially connecting through a dating agency. Their naturalistic, refreshingly frank give and take bantering always contains a firm proclamation of love between its lines.
Conversely, Deirdre (Charlotte Donnelly) and Gordon (Alexander McConnell) who are on their honeymoon when we meet them may be much younger, but they seem as remote as two ships which consistently pass one another in the night. As they sightsee in the same church Peggy and Wilson have recently left, their conversation rings as hollow as the imaginary building they are visiting. But as we get to know them a little better, we see that they are a couple largely dependent upon outside stimulus, like gossip and TV, as opposed to the stimulation simply being together provides. Perhaps this rather sad, blasé pair could be seen as a metaphor for today’s over-abundance of overtly bored (and boring) telly addicts, and/or other couples whose communication has dwindled down to the point of extinction due to over-reliance on outside stimulus. Deirdre and Gordon’s generally banal verbal exchanges could become somewhat monotonous, were it not for the fact that they their misleadingly open dealings are alternated with revitalising, illusion free scenes between Peggy and Wilson, whom their dead-head counterparts, thankfully never encounter.
Creating a meeting point for his four characters may have been a logical direction for playwright Neil to have taken them in. Happily, however, nothing atypical ever seems to take place between Peggy and Wilson, despite the fact that they are seen doing any number of everyday things like going to the supermarket, for example, through which we get to know this delightful pair and their foibles even better. Thanks to Neil’s winning way with dialogue, especially on their behalf, the couple never run out of things to say to each other and all of it is both interesting and funny, thanks to the varying angles their opposing viewpoints present, along with the infectious sense of seemingly, spontaneous delight these two characters take in one another’s company. However, if Deirdre and Gordon’s main reason for existing is to provide a more one-dimensional contrast to Peggy and Wilson’s multi-layered characters and coupling in order to enable audiences to appreciate his pensioners more as individuals, than perhaps, merely as ‘quirky’ senior citizens, than they’ve served a more than useful purpose and one could almost forgive them their drabness! In both cases, the action of the play could be seen as a series of parallel vignettes, with each couple interacting in the context of the same setting, one after the other.
After watching this play, it was determined, after careful examination, that there was no one’s name listed on the programme as Director, leading one to conclude, perhaps wrongfully, that the actors may have followed Neil’s guidance, along with their own instincts. In any event, well done to all concerned!
Set Designs by Ken Mc Clymont could be among the most economically effective ever, consisting as they do mainly of various coloured cloth backdrops attached to Velcro at the tops, and removed layer by layer as the play progresses. They offer just enough of a suggestion of place to let us know where scenes are set, allowing the audience to focus mainly on the acting, which is just as it should be.
Spending the Pension is definitely, well worth the effort and pennies you’d have to expend in order to buy a ticket and experience it yourself. In fact, if you don’t take in Andrew Neil’s latest play, you’ll be missing out on a fine example of Fringe Theatre’s potential to offer much food for thought, seemingly, via little more than a bit of imagination and a double helping of love.
Performances: Tue – Sat at 7.30pm, Sunday at 5pm
Matinees: Wed 13th and Wed 20th at 2.30pm
Venue: The Old Red Lion Theatre, 418 St. John Street, London EC1V 4NJ (Angel Tube) Website: www.oldredliontheatre.co.uk
Box Office: 020 7837 7816
Tickets: Tickets £12 (£10)
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