ARTIST'S MODEL
Venue:
New Vic Studio Theatre, Bristol
Reviewer: Gerry Parker
Publication: Evening Post
Take
a note of the name Sarah Mann. In a play which has quite a few faults,
her bravura performance shone like a prize jewel.
Her jabbering artist's model, Penny, so keen to help weak-willed
would-be writer Tony and to bed him, leaves you breathless.
Author Jim Madden plays the writer who accepts Penny's help but
quickly betrays her with cocaine sniffing ex-Yuppie flatmate Joan.
Stephanie Prince brings a great deal of malice and menace to this
role viciously turning on Tony in the end.
It was all rather like listening to pop music messages being repeated
over and over again.
So many possibilities were opened but little time to explore more
than a few.
John Sharian who made such a hit as Chris Keller in the Old Vic's
production of All My Sons directs incisively and at a cracking pace.
Venue:
Komedia, Brighton
Reviewer: Roger Love
Publication: The Argus
Writer
and performer Jim Madden takes us into a terrible and foul-mouthed
but very funny world in this play.
He plays Tony, a not-so-reformed drunk, freshly out of mental hospital
and cadging lodgings in North London.
His hosts are the ever-talking and self-doubting Penny (played by
Sarah Mann) and vampish, bitchy stockbroker Joan (Stephanie Prince)
and to say he is out of his depth is an understatement.
We watch the three wonderfully-drawn characters argue, make love
and drink tea in a claustrophobic modern flat.
Sarah Mann manages the near-impossible, making her character incredibly
irritating to those living with her on stage but not unwatchable
to the audience.
All three performers manage to be subtle as well as broad in drawing
the terrible trio, and the whole show is full of deliciously funny
lines, cutting home truths, and rich images.
