Looking back at a blankish canvas

10 April 2012

Time has been unkind to John Osborne's 1968 vacuous, escapist comedy about six film-industry friends holed up in a first-class Amsterdam hotel while trying to enjoy a weekend away from it all and their tyrannical film producer, KL.

Robin Lefevre's beautifully acted, well-pitched revival suggests there must have been stars - particularly Paul Scofield, who created the lead role of Laurie - dazzling the eyes of critics at the premiere. For The Hotel in Amsterdam was showered with praise and amazingly won The Evening Standard's Best Play drama award in 1968. It was, though, one of the last scripts Osborne wrote before his career went into a sharp decline. And the diminishing of his famous theatrical talent is everywhere apparent. The loyal first nighters laughed a lot, but there was no concealing the feebleness of Osborne's conception.

There is a laborious two-hour stretch of playing-time, during

which we are confined in the company of five unfairly boring people, plus Laurie, a writer and angry young master of invective with a talent to abuse.

Designer Liz Ascroft dreams up a sumptuous Sixties luxury suite. The well-heeled married couples sit around copiously drinking, vacillating over where to eat and mainly listening to the assorted diatribes of Laurie. An atmosphere of ennui and melancholia grows. A riveting Tom Hollander, who delivers a stinging put-down or dismissal in an angry nasal blast of pique, mounts one hobby-horse after another and dynamically rides them all like a champion jockey astride a donkey: Osborne squanders his gift for excoriation with cranky petulance about air hostesses, the French, Americans, homosexuals and poor relations.

All of Osborne's earlier plays enjoyed a dramatic or theatrical line of argument or engagement. Here, though, there are no essential changes, developments or discoveries. We learn little about any of the characters. Laurie's late declaration of love for Olivia Williams's cool, calm and already collected Annie, who is married to Anthony Calf 's delightfully dim film editor, may be known to his wife: Susannah Harker's elegant Margaret looks like a cross between Julie Christie and Dusty Springfield. But neither this passion nor a surprise visitor disturbs the loquacious torpor. A programme note claims the play is about friendship, betrayal and love, but these elements are no more than dabs of colour on a blankish canvas.

  • Until 15 November. Box office: 020 7369 1732.

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