Summer and Smoke - "a dramatic and powerful platform for these wonderful young actors" ****

Tennessee Williams wrote Summer and Smoke in 1948, in between A Street car named under desire (1947) and A cat on a hot tin roof (1955). Like its better known plays its central character is a woman consumed by desires but Alma is desperately trying to control and suppress her feelings in pursuit of a higher spiritual satisfaction.

 This powerful modern feeling production which transfers from the Almeida is stripped back to a bare stage surrounded by seven open pianos, metronomes and chairs. They contain and underpin the action with haunting strains when played. The effect is to focus our attention on the two young central characters, Alma and John who inhabit the semi circular space like fighters in a boxing ring. Such focus requires performers of the highest quality and precision to sustain our interest and this production is delivered by two of the finest two young actors to debut in the West End in the last few years.

Patsy Ferran, who graduated from RADA in 2014 has astounded audiences in all her West End appearances, dominating the stage with her intense, physical and expressive acting. Here she completely inhabits Alma's complex uptight awkwardness as a preachers daughter who teaches music in the small town of Glorious Hill , Mississippi but hints at the passion that is boiling up inside her ready to explode if she lets her self control slip. it's mesmerising to watch from her first compelling breakdown at a microphone and she hardly ever leaves the stage.

 

Opposite her is Matthew Needham, who recently brilliantly played a gay man in Mike Bartlett's Cock at Chichester, here is the young redneck doctor’s son brimming with passion and desire for the young women of the Southern American town who becomes the obsessive target of Alma's suppressed desires. He talks of feeding his mind, his stomach and his sexual desire, while she is feeding her soul and this creates a desert between them.

When the summer of suppressed passion passes, a sudden dramatic shock (brilliantly played) to the community changes everything and her resolve weakens as the fires of her desire within her cloud her thinking.

The leading two are well supported by a cast of six others playing the family and other community members often without a change of costume. In particular I enjoyed Anjana Vasan who plays all the other young women in the town and Forbes Masson who plays both Alma’s preacher father and John’s Doctor Father, especially in the dramatic events of the second half.

Director Rebecca Frecknall brings a clear distinctive vision to the  production giving it an ethereal feel as if the action is all in the mind of Alma and keeps the action moving along at pace with a minimum of fuss which is reinforced by the spine tingling underscore .

This may not be Tennessee Williams greatest play but in the hands of Needham and Ferran it provides a dramatic and powerful platform for these wonderful young actors

Nick Wayne