Bold Play Rings With Poetic Justice: Five Gold Rings

by Aleks Sierz, The Stage, December 24, 2003

Who remembers poetic drama? Since the late fifties the driving force of British drama has been naturalistic social realism. But now, increasingly, some young writers are struggling against the stanglehold of soap opera dialogue and plodding plots to explore new dramatic forms in which big ideas are expressed through bold theatrical experiments.

Joanna Laurens' Five Gold Rings revives poetic drama as Henry, an old man who lives alone on his desert farm, invites his two sons and their wives home for Christmas. But, when the two couples -- Daniel and Freyja, Simon and Miranda -- get together the tensions between them rise as the sibling rivalry between the two brothers is expressed by Daniel's attraction to Miranda. In the end, the wedding rings worn by the characters are all symbolically tarnished.

A simple and highly emotive plot is elevated to a higher plane by Laurens' cascades of poetic hyper-realism. Instead of saying "You make him impotent," a character will say "You sing his stick asleep." Sometimes this sounds portentous, at other times it is gently humourous.

This production, directed with deep sympathy by Michael Attenborough on Es Devlin's superbly parched sundial set, takes flight on the wings of an excellent cast led by David Calder as Henry, with Damian Lewis and Will Keen as the brothers Daniel and Simon and Helen McCrory and Indira Varma as Miranda and Freyja.

This play will not be everyone's cup of tea but it will be interesting to see how Laurens develops her unique dramatic voice.

Caption: Well-rounded -- Damian Lewis and Helen McCrory in Five Gold Rings.