The Value Of Names – White Bear Theatre, Kennington

Writer / Director: Jeffrey Sweet

Reviewer: Christine Stanton

“Focused Dialogue“

2.5 / 5

Norma is an aspiring actress, following in the footsteps of her father – the renowned Benny Silverman. Not wanting to be cast in his shadow, she makes the big decision to change her surname, hoping it will avoid assumptions of nepotism and allow her to craft a career in her own right.

Benny (Jeremy Kareken) is hurt by the news – initially worried the change is related to its Jewish background, before quickly assuming Norma’s mother (his ex-wife) put her up to it. His concerned, controlling, yet caring nature extends to a lot of Norma’s life – where she’s living, how often she sees him and whether she’ll be doing topless scenes in her new play. Kareken displays his parental protectiveness over Norma well, though allows Benny’s emphatically stubborn nature to overrule in his personality. When the director of Norma’s new show falls ill, Leo (Tim Hardy) steps in to help out, much to Benny’s dismay – Leo had got Benny blacklisted many years ago, derailing his career and leaving him with a grudge he will never forgive.

This three handed show, is very dialogue heavy – without much staging, it’s almost like being a fly on the wall during a real-time conversation. Norma (Katherine Lyle) breaks the fourth wall occasionally – narrating the passing of time between conversations and the set that audiences should imagine, which does help to break up the monotony of the conversations somewhat. The initial scene between Benny and Norma is a good one, the pair convey believable familial chemistry, and their rapid, realistic, interactions work well at engaging the audience. The pacing works, and it is a promising start, with an interesting script and two well spoken actors.

The introduction of Leo initially causes a slight stir, but the interaction between Leo and Benny is lengthy and mostly uninteresting, with very little tonal changes to help compartmentalise the long conversation. There are a few stumbles and mistakes from the pair that could be avoided with some better pacing, to allow each of the actors to recompose rather than perform the long scene in one segment. Norma’s reintroduction adds a bit more oomph back into the show and helps progress it along however. There are a lot of interesting aspects within the script, it just needs some tweaking to string them all together better to make them stand out.  

Runs until 1^st March 2025