Having been the target of vitriolic and antisemitic attacks for many years because of her support for Israel, most recently in Aberdeen where apparently clueless Scottish pro-Palestinian activists used the racist trope of a Jew with horns in order to accuse her of bigotry, it is easy to forget that Dame Maureen Lipman is, in the best possible sense, a clown.
As the eponymous Allegra in Peter Quilter’s new play Lipman is its goofy, unapologetically optimistic heroine. It is a role in which she generates laughter at will with supremely timed punchlines and, when needed, quirky facial and vocal eruptions to convey her character’s eccentricity.
Allegra is an oasis of unconditional happiness in a world drained of the stuff. So brimful with joy is she, her house, where she lives alone, is filled with song sung by her. If she has visitors – always her concerned brother Ronen (John Middleton) and her Czech carer Anna (Elizabeth Bower) – a phrase that is spoken in conversation will trigger memories of a lyric prompting the entire number to which it is attached to be performed in her head or out loud.
The singing is rough but this being Lipman, three of whose Olivier nominations were for musicals (her win was for Best Comedy Performance), Allegra always sings in tune. This was not the case with one of Lipman’s previous starring roles, the real-life New York socialite Florence Foster Jenkins, AKA “the worst singer in the in the world” who was the subject of Quilter’s hit play Glorious!.
Yet, as with Jenkins, the life blood of Allegra is infused by music she cannot help performing even if it arrives as noise pollution to the ears of others. Those who have complained to exasperated Officer Rogers (Bailey Patrick) include neighbours, shopkeepers, the local curry house and the library. If they didn’t enjoy Allegra’s rendition of Der Rosenkavalier they should be grateful she started from Act 3, says the offender. This makes Officer Rogers – a PC-ploddish character straight out of a Seventies sitcom -– apoplectic with rage.
Allegra’s happiness has, we learn, been pathologised. Pills have been prescribed. Although she has lived all her life this way, her transgressions are offered up by Quilter as endearing elderly eccentricities of the kind extolled in that awful poem (once voted Britain’s favourite) Warning, by Jenny Joseph, which romanticises bad behaviour that might actually be dementia. It begins “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple,” which is the colour of Allegra’s dressing gown worn after she gets up at three in the afternoon.
There is no hint of Alzheimer’s in Allegra’s case, it should be emphasised. But other than her irrepressible joy there isn’t a great deal else either. Without Lipman’s comedy superpower the evening, directed and choreographed by Stephen Mear, would fall flat, which makes the play feel more like a star vehicle than a work of any depth. In other words, it is the kind of play that needs Lipman rather than deserves her.
They are out there. Downstairs at the Hampstead Theatre Joshua Harmon’s We Had a World is a knotty, funny work about a Jewish family in which, I kept thinking, Lipman would be great. Not because the play is Jewish, but because it is much more than a star vehicle.
Allegra is in Richmond Theatre until June 13 and then touring, arriving in the West End at the Harold Pinter Theatre July 8
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