Catherine Bennett resumes the weekly look at the performing arts world, with the sad end of Jerusalem, the luck of a cabbie, and French revolt. Do you hear the people sing?
Adam Alcock reviews Nigel Kennedy playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons and his own Four Elements at York Opera House.
Catherine Bennett highlights the trends in the performing arts world today.
Jonathan Cridford reviews 'Ghosts', one of the Freshers' plays for this year.
Molière’s farcical play follows the life of miserly George Dandin (Rebecca Darmody), a man whose wife is cheating on him, but whenever he tries to catch her in the act, events conspire against him and he is made to look the fool. This is the sort of subject matter that can makes you grate your teeth with frustrated empathy for the downtrodden protagonist, but one couldn’t help feeling dislike for Darmody’s greasy, stooped, miserable portrayal.
Darmody’s work was cut out for her in not only playing the titular role but also a man. One thing notable about her performance is her facial elasticity. The changeability of her facial expression is hilarious and means that she can go from a simpering, mock-obsequiousness to a deadpan threat in the blink of an eye. Much of the humour of the play was due to her delivery of a particular line. However, despite her talent for comic timing, she failed to elicit the same attention from the audience in the more serious monologues, which didn’t quite hold the same tension as the more farcical scenes. This is no doubt in part due to the text, which can seem almost contradictory in places, with rapid shifts in tone from farce to biting social commentary. The translation, by Ranjit Bolt, is also jarring at times with the language used: an attempt to modernise the archaic French register results in formal language but with sudden bursts of slang and swearing, ‘Hell!’, ‘Sod!’, etc., which don’t sit well with the overall aesthetic of the piece.
The period costumes provide a burst of colour against the plain black house which acts as set, the ostentatious red-hued costumes of Monsieur de Sotenville (Oliver Julian) and Madame de Sotenville (Heather Wilmot) delineating their social class instantly. The Sotenville double act were the highlight of the play; their haughty ad-libbing and small additions like chortling or huffing to themselves in pompous dismay gave their roles subtleties that lifted them out of the trap of a stereotypical portrayal of the ‘snob’ characters. The director (Justin Stathers) kept in mind the influence of Commedia dell’Arte on Molière’s writing, as all of the characters had overly-stylised mannerisms and physicality, reflecting the archetypal roles that were originated in that genre. There was a clear creative vision for this production, and apart from some small glitches, such as forgetting some lines (which I can only attribute to first-night nerves), it was a well-managed and entertaining performance.
The second part of the Masters and Misfits double bill centred around a strange concept – imagine being shipwrecked on an island in which the social order is reversed: masters become slaves, and slaves don the clothing and graces of the privileged. Marivaux’s play (here the cast used the translation by Neil Bartlett) takes a look at the way that unkindness and vanity breed out of a position of authority.
When two wealthy characters, Iphicrates (Joe Popplewell) and Euphrosine (Alice Johnston) are washed up on the shore of the Island of Slaves with their two respective servants, Harlequin (Gareth Prescott) and Cleanthis (Daisy Bunyan), they do not expect to be forced by a mysterious Trivelin (Daniel Gibbons) to switch roles. The problem with this play is that it followed a traditional morality tale linearity: typically, the slaves realised how quickly they became just as vicious as their masters when given control over them, and the arrogance of the wealthy was transformed into humility when experiencing those cruelties from a different angle.
The text was a bit preachy, and so wasn’t as obviously funny as the first part of the double bill. Although the plot was predictable, it was a visually exciting play to watch: dynamic staging and good use of space meant that the scenes never became too static, despite all of the action being set in the same location. It had a beautifully designed and crafted set, including a solitary, ramshackle beach hut, a broken half of a boat, and a sad-looking scarecrow, all with the same dull brown and weather-beaten colour palette, creating a perfect sense of desolation and seclusion from the high-class Athenian society from which the characters had come. Unfortunately, other design decisions weren’t suitable, such as the shadowy lighting (is that a contradiction in terms?) used in order to create a sense of ruin and an unwelcoming atmosphere, which resulted in the actors’ faces not being clearly lit when they stood downstage.
This caused less of a problem with the character of Harlequin, an almost fool-like role, as he leaped about the stage, never staying in one area for too long. Prescott’s Harlequin was protean, changing rapidly from one extreme of emotion to the next, and his clowning and pratfalling provided the few laughs of the play. He stood out amongst the others due to a very stylised physicality and vocalisation that were excellently controlled, but it did mean that the other actors’ more naturalistic interpretation of their characters wasn’t as captivating. The female actors, in particular, were sometimes so shrill as to be unintelligible. It seems that the cast need to unify their creative vision more, so that no one person stands out for a definitive style and manner that jars with the rest of the production. Saying that, one found oneself not only believing Popplewell’s and Johnston’s sincerity when they vow to be kinder masters at the resolution of the play, but even pitying them for the humiliations they have endured - despite the memory of their snivelling cowardliness at the beginning.
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