Theater: Midlands Blues

ROSE

by Andrew Davies

Glenda Jackson is a buzz saw of an actress and Rose is a toothpick of a play. This sense of imbalance sets the tone of the evening. Jackson possesses a feral magnetism; the play is nerveless, somnolent, inert. She is direct; the play is diffuse. In vocal inflection and delivery, she is a wicked font of wit and irony; the play is parched for either.

Sometimes a dramatist offers one special clue as to his intent, and British Playwright Davies seems to do that when he has Rose quote a line from the German socialist revolutionary Rosa...