Evening Standard from London, Greater London, England • 50

50 TUESDAY 17 NOVEMBER 1998 Reviews EVENING STANDARD Straight confessions amid the gay frolics Lips Together Teeth Apart Orange Tree Richmond NICK CURTIS AFTER three mediocre dramas the Orange repertory season has finally produced a gem in Terrence bittersweet comedy about four fraughtly bickering heterosexuals cast in at the gay deep end McNally imagines two straight Connecticut couples variously suffering from illness unhappiness and infidelity celebrating the Fourth of July on a Fire Island beach house that one of their number has inherited from her dead gay brother While homosexuals frolic around them McNally gently uncovers the secrets and prejudices in confessional asides The play could certainly do with some polishing and judicious cutting but a gem nonetheless Sally (Amanda Royle) whose island it is is variously haunted by memories of her brother (whose sexuality she never accepted) and Ratings: adequate good very good outstanding poor which contrasts sharply with his savage wit elsewhere: it is a credit to Auriol pacy direction that one never winces too much Even though her cast especially Kemp look rather too young to play fortysomething losers production carries the stamp of conviction Fox is very good indeed as the supercilious John and Tregear is splendid in the thankless role of the twittering Chloe Royle is fittingly remote as Sally and Kemp though rather too camp to deliver homophobic comments about with full force is blisteringly convincing in his rage Although his characters are by turns weak stupid and vicious McNally retains sympathy for them The contrasting abandon of the offstage gay parties is a sad rather than sardonic counterpoint to their unhappiness For all its faults Lips Together Teeth Apart is a great find as humane as it is humorous OIn repertory until 12 December Box office: 0181 940 3633 by the vision of a man drowning offshore Things helped by the fact that she is pregnant again after several miscarriages and has slept with her brother-in-law John (Stuart Fox) who has been diagnosed with cancer wife Chloe (Lucy Tregear) keeps up a constant background buzz of inane chatter and old show tunes and seems unhealthily dose to her boorish brother Sam (Paul Kemp) husband The particle-thin veneer of amicability between these four is regularly ruptured by tactless bitchiness and once by outright violence But the real depth of their lack of understanding of themselves and each other is revealed when McNally freezes the action and has them speak directly to us This is a clumsy device and dialogue is prone in these moments to a mawkishness Alastair Muir Haunted: Amanda Royle and Paul Kemp In Lips Together Teeth Apart Freak show with alien in the line-up NEW music venues in London are always welcome but the Sound Republic will have to go some to win over the allegiance of local punters At present it feels like a cross between a chrome-lined meat packing hall and a tourist trap which may amount to the same thing Maybe that's why last night's combination of Icelandic band Moa and West Country rock lads Electrasy was such a mismatch despite the Swiss Centre's reputation for neutrality The headliners are an up-and-coming act with a big backing a frantic tour schedule and an erratic fanbase so the audience sheltered under the curious rather than the committed Visual Sensual Metropolitan Cosmopolitan Fashion Passion Shopping Bopping Grazing Stargazing Amazing The essential Metropolitan magazine Suffering from censory ways this off-kilter outfit are resolutely old-fashioned They wear their Brit power pop credentials with a surfeit of party gags Beautiful Insane was a case in point since they never seemed certain whether it was better to freak out on psychedelics or laugh at the stupidity of it all By contrast post-Weimar Republic cabaret and measured pseudo-jazz had far more identity even if this crowd remained unmoved once you'd extracted the loyal Icelandic emigres Moa herself is a gifted chanteuse with one foot in the Eartha Kitt camp and I mean camp and the other in modem Euro disco It should be a cold day in hell before these two acts meet again deprivation which Rex Lawson pumped away at had been banned and burnt Fetes galantes and which Jill Gomez sang with a retuned piano and a different pianist (Sir Simon) yet which were still pitched poorly were written under Nazi occupation but were not banned What was wrong with the real degenerate Schoenberg Weill Krenek Heifetz or Komgold? Quartet for the End of Time may have been written in a PoW camp but it was not banned Sir Simon was joined by Tasmin Little Lynn Harrell and Anthony Pay whose solo movement was a thing to savour but the performance lacked the cohesion which regular foursomes have There was one censored item A drunk came in at half time and started singing loudly at the back but was frog-marched out by officials I am sure he sang something about beef on the bone Electrasy Sound Republic W1 MAX BELL umbrella Semi-bearded vocalist All McKinnell didn't seem to mind as he breezed through Lost In Space and the acidic beat-driven Chemical Angel but it was a bit of a shock to clock a guitarist wearing an alien costume and goofing off with scant disregard for taste or sincerity That jokey atmosphere pervaded set as they feigned sound problems ruminated on the pleasures of Dutch dope and offered a new song called Downer that was nothing of the sort In many Concert Of Banned Music Union Chapel N1 RICK JONES Wrong turning: Simon Rattle subversive works he himself withheld Conlon music was only suppressed although no one would have complained if the four jangling expressionless pianola studies FREE WITH THE EVENING STANDARD EVERY FRIDAY THE world is keen to know whither Sir Simon Rattle is headed after Birmingham He made a wrong turning last night by involving himself in this half-baked cabaret of so-called banned music at the Union Chapel Islington a fund-raiser for the self-righteous Index Magazine and sponsored by the Government-backed Express newspaper Did I fall asleep or was there a banned piece on the programme? Soprano Jill Gomez made the piano sound sharp with a Franco-baiting Catalan folksong which Pablo Casals had taught the world so that hardly counted Tenor Philip Langridge sang dull songs by the British Communist Alan Bush whose music was not banned just unfashionable Bass Robert Lloyd sang with rich expression Four Monologues Op 9 but these were not on any censored list Most of.