Review: Empty Bed Blues, Lakeside Arts Centre

By [rellis]

D H Lawrence is a massively over-rated writer. Most of his ideas are not just wrong: they're a load of half-baked nonsense that won't stand scrutiny. And his prose is usually dreadful. In this play, Stephen Lowe's latest, Lawrence strides about pontificating exactly as he writes.

But don't let that put you off. The play is rich and interesting at many levels, it's a visual delight - and it's stunningly well acted by everyone.

DHL and his wife Frieda are visiting Harry and Caresse, a couple of wealthy American aesthetes; they want Harry, a publisher, to put up the money for Lady Chatterley. Lawrence, racked with tuberculosis, has only months to live.

Sex is the over-arching theme, of course, but the play is interwoven with discussion of class, cultural values and religion. It's also paradoxical, funny and tragic.

Tim Dantay is outstanding as Lawrence. He captures the repression, the social awkwardness and the chip on the shoulder remarkably well. And so is Clare Calbraith as Caresse, who despite her ridiculously open relationship with Harry, is as in need of proper love as the rest of us.

It's an ingenious set, with a real pool of water from which Harry (Tristan Tait) makes his entrance stark naked in the first few seconds. Frieda (Marion Bailey) also takes a dip later on, and so does Caresse. It's symbolically significant that Lawrence is the only one who doesn't.

Directed by Matt Aston, this is another fine in-house production from the Lakeside Arts Centre.

ALAN GEARY