SAY IT WITH FLOWERS      A REVIEW

                                                  SHERMAN THEATRE PREVIEW   MAY 16TH.

                                                        Third age critic  P Roper

The welsh singer Dorothy Squires was one of the most popular artistes of the 1940’s. Dynamic and charismatic on stage she topped theatre bills throughout Britain and her talent was adored by many for over 40 years.

Off stage , however, she was a complex and difficult character and according to those who knew her she could be uncompromising, abrasive and sometimes cruel. Others describe her as generous and she threw regular parties at her seventeen room mansion in Bray.

She is most famously known for her marriage to Roger Moore and the bankruptcy and paranoia of her later years brought on by an overdose of constant litigation until she was finally ordered by a judge never to darken the doors of the Law Courts again!

 SAY IT WITH FLOWERS  , a play written by Meic Povey and Johnny Tudor chooses a period in Dorothy’s life when she was at her most vulnerable in order to portray a softer side to her character which Johnny saw and knew.

We first meet  Old Dot , played by Ruth Madoc , in a room as disastrously furnished as the life to which she has sunk. Homeless and penniless she has been given a home  back in Wales  by an adoring fan ,Maisie , who has promised to relaunch her career in the local “Con Club”

Lyn Hunter skilfully plays the unsophisticated Maisie who has  no fashion sense and has singing ambitions of her own. She is a perfect foil and sounding board for  Dorothy and her clothes clash brilliantly with the hideous wallpaper and carpet.

On an adjoining bare stage we have Young Dot with all her dreams and passions at the most successful time of her life. Gillian Kirkpatrick captures the look of the young Dorothy perfectly and wears the gowns with glamour. Matt Nalton plays a handsome and suave Roger Moore and they look the perfect showbiz couple as they break into song with

                 “ On a wonderful day like today “

The play gets off to quite a slow start and it is not really until the second half that the drama really builds and we see the full extent of Old Dot’s paranoia.We see her acerbic side but the ‘softer side ‘ relating to her love for her family is not much in evidence. She quarrels with both her brother and her niece and refuses to attend the funerals of her nearest and dearest claiming she has work commitments. Gillian Kirkpatrick doesn’t quite capture Dorothy’s waspishness while Ruth Madoc delivers some acid one liners and demonstrates she can swear like a trooper.

The most dramatic part of the play comes in the second half when Old Dot, hallucinating and at the height of her paranoia is haunted by ghosts of the past crawling out of the woodwork. The powerful blue flashing lights scene shows the Old and Young Dot sharing Dorothy’s demons as Ruth Madoc imagines Roger Moore is a policeman dragging her off to prison.

The clever change of scenery at this point sees the whole stage transformed into a bleak NHS corridor with peeling white walls and a single bed where Dot is to end her days.

Much of the play ,however , is quite lightweight and doesn’t delve that deeply into Dorothy’s psyche and many questions are left unanswered.

The reasons for Dorothy’s self destructive forays into litigations are unexplained and barely mentioned,  and what about those letters from Roger Moore ? Was she really obsessively in love with him all her life or just furious because he left her and not the other way around.

Nonetheless Dorothy’s songs were prettily sung and much enjoyed by the audience who clamoured for more and the play is certain to be popular with Squires fans as it begins its tour of Wales.

                                                                           PATRICIA ROPER