Stroke of Luck is the debut play, based on real-life events, from veteran American theatre publicist and music industry manager Larry Belling, and it unfortunately too often looks like an ill-guided rookie piece of work.
There’s a fateful ambivalence of tone: is it farce, black comedy or a serious family drama?
The premise, at least, is credible enough. Lester Riley (Tim Pigott-Smith), wheelchair-bound after a stroke, announces at his late wife’s memorial service that he is going to marry Lily (Julia Sandiford), the young and pretty Japanese nurse who has been caring for him in a home. His three adult children, estranged from him and each other, are outraged, especially when it transpires that Lester has hoarded a secret fortune from his work as a television repair man to — and here it started to lose me — the Mob.
Pigott-Smith goes at his fulcrum part with impressive conviction but he’s the only character whom Belling has bothered to develop fully. The children are an odd collation of traits and one-line snatches of information, and I was downright perplexed as to why Lester and his wife had been, self-proclaimedly, such spiteful and neglectful parents. The inevitable plot reversal takes a long time coming in Kate Golledge’s sometimes lumpen production. This just about struggles into the three-star category but the Park Theatre really needs to up its game.
Until March 2 (020 7870 6876, parktheatre.co.uk)
