Review I Loved Lucy

A play about a television icon makes Francis Beckett ponder on the cult of celebrity nostalgia infecting current playwriting.  

I Loved Lucy
By Lee Tannen

After The Ball Is Over
https://artstheatrewestend.co.uk/

Younger theatregoers start here. I Love Lucy was a 1950s' American sitcom which was also shown here starring Lucille Ball and her first husband Desi Arnaz.

The series was fast and funny and established Ball as one of the earliest great female comics.  Children used to badger their parents to be allowed to stay up and watch it.  (I speak on this with authority.)

In the late seventies, when Lucille was in her late sixties, she met a young man in his twenties called Lee Tannen, distantly related to her second husband, who had grown up hero-worshipping her.

He was her friend for most of the last ten years of her life, and he has now written this two-hander play about that friendship.

The best thing about the evening is a wonderful performance by Sandra Dickinson who spits out her lines in just the way I imagine Lucille in old age would have done.

Lee is played with great assurance by Matthew Scott, but he is hampered by having very little to work with.

We learn early on that he is a gay, neurotic Jewish New Yorker and an unsuccessful writer. For the rest, his devotion to Lucille has to substitute for character and, directed by Anthony Biggs, Mr Scott does well to make that even remotely convincing, obliged as he is to tell us frequently, in slightly different ways, how wonderful she is.

The story goes like this. Lee meets Lucy, is overawed, but manages to forge a strong friendship with her. She takes him to parties and first nights, but mostly they play backgammon, and talk, and occasionally what they say is quite funny.

At the end of Act One they fall out, and at the start of Act Two they make it up again. And at the end of Act Two (normally reviewers do not reveal the denouement, but in this case I don’t think I will spoil anyone’s enjoyment) she dies.

That’s it, really, except that after she dies the author seems to remember a few things he wanted to say about what a great genius she was that he hasn’t squeezed in earlier, and detains us for another ten minutes or so while he says them.

There seems to be a growing view in London theatre that if your central character is a famous actor, you need only recount what happened and you can call it theatre.

I’ve seen a couple of shows recently that appear to have been written on that premise, and I don’t buy it.

I need a plot to hold my attention or, at least, an overarching theme or some clever and unexpected insights; and if none are present, then I need a lot of very funny lines.

Mr Tannen doesn't offer any of these things. There are a few good lines, but not enough of them, and  they are not good enough.

“What did the doctor say to the midget? I’m afraid you’re going to have to be a little patient” is about as good as it gets, unless you prefer “Lucy loved Oprah when Oprah still had a last name.”

I’ll stretch to an amber light on the basis that it’s always a pleasure to watch top class actors at work.

Review I Loved Lucy

I Loved Lucy

by Lee Tannen

Queen of Comedy

http://www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk/

Back in the day TLT faintly recalls as a tot enjoying the slapstick in reruns of sitcom I Love Lucy. It was part of the strange glamour mingled with down-to-earth accessibility of Americana seeping on to British commercial TV. 

And for TLT it had a kindred spirit in the copies of "Jack and Jill" TLT'S great aunt (her grandmother's sister-in-law) sent over from New York with one particularly memorable story of the little boy who despaired of needing nerdy glasses until he saw a native American Red Indian chieftain in full headdress wearing - yes! - a pair of spectacles. 

But enough of TLT!

For this is a review of I Loved Lucy, an American play, written by and based on Lee Tannen's memoir of his father's cousin's wife's brother's wife, Lucille Ball.

Tannen presents himself as tongue-tied fan, an escort of, a backgammon player with, bathed in the aura of, estranged from and finally reconciled with the redheaded icon and TV pioneer in this canter through the years between 1960 and her death in 1989.

After the opening strains of Frank Sinatra singing "How Little We Know" drift away, theatre ad copywriter Tannen creates a world where sitcom and life merge together in a portrait of the actress filtered through the character of - er -   Lee Tannen. 

The stage Lee is played by an expressive Matthew Bunn in a clever hall of mirrors' script reflecting on a celebrity in the family, the nature of fandom and the need to earn a living. The stage Tannen may have aspired to the character played in the 1950s by William Holden in Sunset Boulevard  but he slips by tiny increments towards King of Comedy's 1980s' Rupert Pupkin.    

Meanwhile Sandra Dickinson's more deliberately naturalistic performance as the star of sitcom and sponsorship herself in her last years is a true revelation. She inhabits the tracksuits and personality of the model turned Hollywood B-actress turned everybody's favourite sitcom wife and mom as if a tailor-made role for her.  

We can take what Lucille's sidekick says about her at face value or we can read between the lines. Or we can value what Lucille says about herself. Especially when for a moment she grasps the narration from Lee and guides the play in a new direction near its denouement.

All of which is staged with skilful understatement by director Anthony Biggs. Matched too by the equally skilful set design of Gregor Donnelly backing the two players with large three dimensional letters - L-U-C-Y - filled with black and white press cuttings. A heart, which also graced I Love Lucy's opening credits, doubles up as a suspended screen for evocative images of Lucille and her entourage. 

Yep, we loved this Lucy - a carefully crafted play written with heart and something to impart, meticulously acted and directed. 

And TLT has even managed to find a connection between Jack and Jill and I Love Lucy. 

An early contributor to the kids' magazine was Pearl S Buck who also wrote The Good Earth, turned into a movie filmed by cameraman Karl Freund whom Lucille's then husband Desi Arnaz brought in to film the innovative recordings of I Love Lucy for their Desilu production company. 

Even if  apparently as Lucy Ricardo in I Love Lucy she didn't always deliver the pizza at the right moment for the bosses, a green light for a play which delivers the goods