Bath Theatre Royal: Quartermaine’s Terms

11:35am Tuesday 10th June 2008

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A dingy school staffroom in the 1960s is the setting for Simon Gray's tale of teachers Quartermaine's Terms, at the Bath Theatre Royal this week.

Here the various teachers bring their family dramas, personal crises, triumphs and disasters (though mainly disasters it is fair to say) to share with their colleagues over the course of several years.

Quartermaine’s Terms, By Simon Gray

Bath Theatre Royal Monday 9- Saturday 14 June 2008

The titular character at this Cambridge school for teaching English to overseas students is one St John Quartermaine, played by Nathaniel Parker (famous for seven series of the Inspector Lynley Mysteries) a kindly but absent-minded teacher who doesn't seem to have a life outside of the school.

Henry (Christopher Timothy of Doctors and All Creatures Great and Small) is coping with a young family.

Wannabe writer Mark (Hal Fowler) is grieving because his wife has left him; Anita (Rosanna Lavelle) is struggling with a philandering husband and Melanie (Chippenham-born Victoria Wicks) is caring for her disabled mother.

Young Derek Meadle (Joe Hill), the latest recruit, is struggling to make ends meet and always having accidents.

Finally there is Eddie Loomis (Charles Kay) who runs the school.

First performed in 1981 the play veers in tone between comedy, tragedy and farce. Each of the characters is struggling to make sense of their lives, dealing with difficult circumstances or thwarted in their dreams. The colleagues try and support each other but always prove ineffectual and ultimately wrapped up in their own concerns to much to be of any real help.

The enduring theme is one of putting on a brave face and muddling through.

Gray is one of our best known contemporary playwrights but Quartermaineís Terms isnít a play that works for me. The comedy is rather obvious (the torn seat of Derek's trousers on his first day had me sighing rather than chortling) and the charactersí dramas come across as melodramatic rather than affecting.

Parker and Timothy gave great performances but the other characters seemed a little strained in comparison. The jokes about the Japanese and our fellow Europeans jarred badly.

The set, however, was marvellous.