Theatre review: According to Ben

Published on Tuesday 26 May 2009 19:02

ACCORDING TO BEN ** ORAN MOR, GLASGOW

IT'S one of the stranger truths about theatre that plays set in old-fashioned radio studios make terrific live drama. There's the tension as transmission time approaches, the inevitable clashing personalities, and the infinite potential for visual comedy, as actors clad in evening dress tramp through pailfuls of water and trays of gravel in the effort to produce sound-effects.

John Bett's latest play for the Oran Mor Play, Pie and Pint lunchtime season makes a game attempt at exploiting these possibilities; and at first, the situation looks promising. A down-at-heel actor arrives at Broadcasting House, in the long cold winter of 1947, to perform a short play about the American scientist, politician and philosopher Benjamin Franklin. He is greeted by mass absenteeism of BBC staff due to fuel shortages, random power-cuts, a tweedy and intense lady replacement producer called Marjorie, and a Scots studio manager called Jock, who plays musical effects on a small whistle, and represents the sceptical proletariat.

Having assembled this cast of characters, though, Bett seems unsure what to do with them. The Benjamin Franklin theme flickers and is gone, as the fictional play becomes submerged in studio banter; and although Bett shows an impressive grasp of the political resonances of his postwar moment, they float around in a dramatic vacuum, without structure or conflict. As a result, the comedy peters out after 20 minutes or so; and the rest seems like an over-extended spoof on the old British establishment, funny enough to start with, but finally heading nowhere.