Engaging eccentricity in Malvern

1:59pm Thursday 28th August 2008

DYSFUNCTIONAL families are often at the heart of drama and Born in the Gardens, currently showing at Malvern’s Festival Theatre, is no exception.

Dotty as they come, Maud (Stephanie Cole) is dusting round her husband’s coffin, looking forward to her drink and a little sit down in front of the silent black-wand-white TV, ready for a chat with the people in the adverts.

She and her middle-aged son, Maurice (Allan Corduner), are waiting for the remaining members of the family, MP Hedley (Simon Shepherd) and Mo’s twin Queenie (Miranda Foster), who now lives in California - or Californial as Maud insists on calling it. On the face of it, these two have achieved success, leaving Maud and Mo trapped in the decaying Tudor Manor, but this laugh-out-loud comedy reveals that success is not always quite what it seems... and freedom is as much a state of mind as a physical one.

Stephanie Cole has created a memorable Maud, one whose refusal to embrace the modern world and retreat from everyday reality and is clearly also an escape from the truth about her own family, where Hedley’s recollections of his alcoholic father are revised to him having ‘liked a little drink’ and Queenie’s too-close encounter with her father disguised as favouritism.

The eccentricity of late 70s England is gloriously captured and there is much to laugh at, and Stephanie Cole in her purple-rinsed ‘Afrodisiac’ wig steals the show.

Born in the Gardens runs until Saturday at Malvern’s Festival Theatre. To book call the box office on 01684 892277 or visit malvern-theatres.co.uk