THEATRE REVIEW: Talking Heads/The Actors’ Studio

Jul 1 2009 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

Pauline Daniels at the Actors Studio _320

THERE are some people blessed with a knack for words – Alan Bennett for choosing each one so it suits its neighbour and placing them together into a humorous but remarkably human tale; Pauline Daniels for delivering them in a way that does justice to their origin.

In this selection of the Yorkshire playwright’s Talking Heads dramatic monologues, she plays two very different characters without them blending in together.

In A Cream Cracker Under the Settee, she is clean-freak Doris, who becomes more determinedly independent as her fragility grows increasingly apparent.

There is a chance for her infectious sense of fun to come out as Irene (she prefers Miss Ruddock from those in authority) in the darkly comic A Lady of Letters, whose (poison) pen is the only friend she can name until she discovers her inner Asbo when detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

These roles were immortalised by Thora Hird and Patricia Routledge in the Talking Heads TV series, yet Daniels makes them very much her own.

Emma Lisi shows real promise as Lesley in Her Big Chance, bringing real warmth into what would otherwise be a fairly unsympathetic part.

If there were one fault, it would be that she fails to wait for the laughs that are rightfully hers, as she relates her experiences as a film extra who unsuspectingly finds herself trying to method act a cheap role in a low- budget porn film.

With a rudimentary set, this was a show that was all about the acting and the material benefited from the intimate setting of the Actors’ Studio, a venue as quintessentially English as the characters Bennett creates.