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Five Gold Rings

  • opened: 12/18/2003
  • closed: 1/17/2004
  • Almeida Theatre
  • Box Office: 020 7359 4404
  • Details:
  • Summary: Visit theARCHIVE to hear a discussion. Reaction has so far generally been negative to the point of downright hostile to Joanna Laurens' follow-up to her acclaimed debut The Three Birds (seen at the Gate, Notting Hill). In Five Gold Rings, Laurens continues her assault on naturalistic theatre. The storyline follows conventional enough lines: Henry (David Calder), is an old man living alone in a house in the desert; he gets visited at Christmas by his two sons and their wives. Both marriages are in difficulty - Miranda wants a child but her husband has had a vasectomy, while Daniel no longer finds his wife Freyja attractive. When Daniel attempts to liaise with Miranda, all kinds of murky revelations spill out - in the most idiosyncratic form of poeticised speech to have been heard on the London stage for many a year. In the Times, Ian Johns remarked: 'Five Gold Rings confirms Laurens as an exciting young writer but her poetic style ultimately makes this family reunion as parched as the play's desert setting. Although Michael Attenborough gives it a superb production with a terrific cast, the dense word-weaving often seems more suited to a slim volume than the stage.' In the Guardian, Michael Billington was approving: 'Laurens attempts to give the story a mythic dimension by using heightened diction that employs cascading images, inverted word order and endless puns. Sometimes the result is faintly absurd - as if Christopher Fry had gone into partnership with Stanley Unwin. But, once the ear becomes attuned, you find Laurens creates a consistent, playfully inventive idiom. At the end, I felt like Dr Dorn in The Seagull, who tells the bruised Konstantin, 'You have talent; you must go on.'' In the Daily Telegraph, Charles Spencer raged: 'Here's as vile a pile of steaming codswallop as it has ever been my misfortune to step in, a work of such punishing pretentiousness that there were moments when I found myself blushing while watching it.' In The Observer, Susannah Clapp suggested: 'It would be hard to imagine the play being given more serious attention. A superb cast - Indira Varma, David Calder, Helen McCrory, Will Keen, Damian Lewis - pick their way with elegance, and even some clarity, through the most florid of speeches. But it's a waste of talent.' In the Sunday Telegraph, John Gross noted: 'The aim is heightened impact and I can see that there is a certain freshness in saying 'I gived you', for exampled, rather than 'I gave you'. But the cumulative effect is one of self-conscious mannerism... The wonder is that something survives... Joanna Laurens deserves credit for wanting to get away from clunking naturalism. But she should take to heart Ezra Pound's admonition that verse ought to be at least as well written as good prose.'
  • Author: Joanna Laurens
  • Director: Michael Attenborough
  • Composer: (sound) John Leonard (music) Adam Cork
  • Lyricist: n/aSet Designer: Es Devlin
  • Lighting Designer: Adam Silverman
  • Costume Designer: n/a
  • Choreographer: n/a
  • Cast Details: David Calder (Henry); Will Keen (Simon); Damian Lewis (Daniel); Helen McCrory (Miranda); Indira Varma (Freyja).
  • Reference: More Info