Review: The Time of Your Life, Finborough Theatre

Written for The Stage

Beginning with a burp and proceeding with equal delicacy, Max Lewendel’s tedious production saps the metaphor and melancholy out of William Saroyan’s Pulitzer-winning portrait of the Great Depression.

Saroyan’s play is more observation than action, sketching the layabouts, prostitutes and directionless masses propped up in a San Francisco dive-bar, as they search for meaning and dream of love. Amongst them are Joe (Alistair Cumming), an unshaven, champagne-swilling hangover of the Roaring Twenties, and Kitty Duval (Maeve Malley-Ryan), an escort with jaded ambitions in burlesque.

By placing us within Nick’s bar, seating audience members at tables within the scene, designer Christopher Hone immerses us in the location. However, Lewendel struggles to reconcile production with design. Stagnant blocking undermines the traverse formation and much of the acting is over-pitched. Moreover, the audience’s place in the scene is confused – alternately acknowledged and ignored.

Lewendel’s production is crippled by its lack of nuance in performance. Several characters are reduced to stock for cheap laughs and dialogue is delivered with Hollywood iconicity. Other than Brett Finlay (Nick) and Payman Jaberi (The Arab), the best one can say of the cast is that it is the largest to have squeezed onto the Finborough’s stage.

Icarus Theatre Collective has served up a sparkling vintage gone absolutely flat.