IS YOUR office a hive of industry – a place where the affairs of business are explored, a venue for righting the wrongs of the world?
Into this potentially confusing world, Alan Bennett treads with an undeniable certainty and an endearing vulnerability.
In Birkenhead-born Patricia Routledge, his double-header Office Suite is in caring and superbly talented hands.
Ms Routledge has almost single-handedly cornered the voice of Alan Bennett – she breathes that certainty and vulnerability which seem to underline his every sentence.
Bennett tells of a pre- email office world in which people take trouble to speak to each other although speaking doesn’t ensure listening.
The first play, A Visit From Miss Prothero, is perhaps a tad too slow. Ms Routledge, the titular Miss Prothero, visits her former boss, now retired Mr Dodsworth (Edward Petherbridge). He has discovered retirement is a full-time job, taking up cooking – “Cordon Bleu”, he confides – with no time for reminiscing. Ms Prothero arrives bringing “all the news”. Despite its pace, it covers a lot of ground, time and memories and there is a delightful twist.
The Lowry’s smaller theatre would have been a better setting. One should overhear Bennett’s dialogue, like someone else’s conversation.
Routledge and Petherbridge are excellent; they collide like a slow-motion train crash, unavoidable yet compulsive.
Part two, Green Forms, is office life in a time when forms had numbers – apart from the Green Form of the title.
Here it is Routledge and Janet Dale, with Petherbridge in support. This is Bennett’s writing at its best, performed by a cast who clearly love his world and his words.
