Performance: Blossom

Herald Theatre

Reviewed by Susan Budd


Blossom is a charming fable on life, love and all that, delightfully performed by Alison Wall and devised by her in association with directors Vanessa Chapple and Ben Crowder.

The action rockets from New Zealand to Morocco as Wall plays myriad characters with verve, humour and compassion.

The play is given form and structure by each scene being introduced by an ancient, Mexican turtle that, contrary to the solemnity usually associated with such creatures, has a grin like a Cheshire cat's.

Despite the hard graft of supporting the pillars of a cathedral on his shell, he is given to gnomic utterances attributed to thinkers as diverse as Aristotle and Lily Tomlin.

Like her creator, Abi is 34. She is bored with her job, boyfriend and particularly with her mother. So why not flee to Morocco?

Wall's most inspired comic creation is Great Aunt Mavis, a former cinema usherette who has come to the conclusion that chocolate biscuits are better than sex any day. With a joyful cackle and enough fizz to fill a magnum of champagne, she is Abi's best friend and mentor. Not even death can keep them apart.

Gorgeous red velvet curtains screen her bedroom, a shrine to Marilyn Monroe and the joy of kitsch, with orange candlewick, leopard skin and gladioli.

In Morocco, the curtains open to reveal in succession a bathhouse, local sanitary arrangements and the cushiony shop of Kamal, Abi's lover. Their delirious lovemaking as Wall slowly rolls down the steps to the curtained dais is comic and sweetly erotic.

Blossom abounds with delicious comic vignettes, but the best are the scenes of a camel slurping a bottle of beer and those featuring Mavis. Mavis in her hospital bed shamelessly manipulating a nurse for happy drugs and returning the doctor's questions with a pithy one of her own, Mavis experiencing culture shock in a Moroccan bathhouse and doing almost anything.

Although the play has some longueurs and is still a little ragged, Blossom is great life-affirming fun.