REVIEW: THE VOICE OF THE TURTLE by John Van Druten at Jermyn Street Theatre 27 June to 20 July 2024

‘I predict full happy houses at Jermyn Street, and they will be well earned. But still….’ ★★★ ½

John van Druten was a writer who made plays, and because he was a pretty good writer, he made them well – box sets, lots of furniture, brittle, witty people saying witty, brittle things in three acts (although The Voice of the Turtle has four acts. So daring!) and it’s fundamentally fluff. A pièce bien faite that engages its audience while they’re in the theatre but doesn’t distract them for an instant longer. A piece that makes a person grateful for John Osborne for breaking the mould, and pleased that theatres like Jermyn Street and directors like Philip Wilson occasionally glue it back together again.

It’s well played. It’s funny-ish – not laugh-out-loud but pleasantly smiley - and it’s charming. Imogen Elliott on debut is excellent, watchable, cute, convincing, lots of good things. Skye Hallam does a fine job with a pair of brief blowsy scenes as the heroine’s good-time friend, and Nathan Ives-Moiba convinces as a cynic bruised by experience who learns to love again. Aundrea Fudge deserves a special mention for the (to my English ear) faultless US accents, and take it for all in all, it’s a good night out. Wanting it to be about something, and to be populated by people who aren’t theatricals in a way that suggests the playwright didn’t know anyone who wasn’t a theatrical, is probably a minority opinion. I predict full happy houses at Jermyn Street, and they will be well earned.  But still ... A little bit of Ibsen-y gloom might be nice.

THE VOICE OF THE TURTLE

BY JOHN VAN DRUTEN

DIRECTED BY PHILIP WILSON.

27 June to 20 July – Jermyn Street Theatre

Box Office https://www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk/show/the-voice-of-the-turtle/