Why has Kim Sex and the City Cattrall chosen to make her West End debut in Brian Clark's euthanasia play? Whose Life is it Anyway?, by all accounts, was a big deal when new in the 1970s, with Tom Conti in the role of the paralysed patient. I am sorry I missed it then. Clark has extensively updated it; it now refers to much that has happened in the past 20 years. It is a clever play. But it feels a bit synthetic, even manipulative. Many of us who followed the Diane Pretty story (which is referred to here) will have been deeply moved. Whose Life is it Anyway?, by comparison, is just an interesting entertainment. Compare it with the last half of the Clint Eastwood film Million Dollar Baby (related subject matter) and this feels like drawing-room comedy.
How much has this to do with Kim Cattrall's central performance as Claire Harrison? (Clark first adapted his play for a woman - Mary Tyler Moore, forsooth - back in the 1980s.) On Desert Island Discs, Cattrall recently claimed that she is primarily a stage actor who does screen work "to support my theatre habit". Indeed, she takes easily to the stage. Her pacing is good, her feisty humour is winning. She does not overdo the interest in sex that is the point of her famous TV role, but judges it so finely that Claire's loss of sexual potential considerably adds to her humanity and poignancy.
Peter Hall, directing, surrounds her with excellent British actors; her rapport with them is good. But if the protagonist of Whose Life is it Anyway? is to be moving, the role calls for an emotional weight that Cattrall lacks, and a force of character. The most moving moments here belong to the stoic Sister Anderson, beautifully played by Ann Mitchell, an actor so superb that I wish she were better known. She and Janet Suzman, who returns to the stage after too long to play Mrs Justice Millhouse, demonstrate a gravitas beside which Cattrall seems callow.
The production runs skilfully, with a newcomer, Alexander Siddig, making a fine impression as Dr Scott. But Paul Pyant's lighting is clinical in the wrong way, and the play feels cleverly artificial in a way that goes beyond the performance of its heroine.
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