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.
This fact has not been lost on the team behind this production, something highlighted by the modern dress of the ruling elite upon which the play focusses (aside from an oddly out of place period cassock used as a disguise). The soft Duke, then, is plotted at from all sides by sharp-suited courtiers, especially the ruthless Mendoza.
Dominic Allen took to this role with obvious relish, treating the audience to scattergun ejections of bile formed as soliloquies, all the more bitter contrasted against winsome composition of love poetry - receiving some of the play's biggest laughs as reward. As his character went on to plumb new depths in the pursuit of power, comically betraying co-conspirators left, right and centre, Allen kept step captivatingly.
Plotting eat the Duke from a different angle is Nik Miller's Malevole, the 'malcontent' of the play's title. The character acts as a seventeenth-century tabloid newspaper, a disaffected persona that allows the character to speak his mind, but is also a disguise for a deposed Duke plotting his way back to power. Malevole's malcontentedness provides much of the comedy, and Miller's Fagin-esque delivery witty and surreal retorts was as sharp and bitter as required. He shone best in the shifts between the Malevole persona and that of the deposed Duke, flipping with increasing frequency as the play progresses.
This manipulation of appearances was mirrored in Bilioso, a courtier so keen to ascend the greasy pole that he has rubbed himself quite transparent. Matt Springett portrayed a nervous compulsion to please superiors brilliantly, a bundle of pregnant pauses, stutters and frenetically writhing hand movements.
A break from the politics, but an impetus for much of the plotting, came from the female characters. Aside from garnishing the play with a healthy sprinkling of barely-disguised innuendo, Alexandra Darlington's licentious Maquerelle and the girls under her charge saunter one step ahead of the label of prostitution and play with the men in the same way that the men play with power.
With such a strong cast the only weaknesses fell to certain aspects of the play's production, the aforementioned cassock was somewhat of a surprise, but not as much as the dreadful music for two dance sequences. Paul Abbot is used regularly by the production company, most notably in Mary Luckhurst's Celebrity, yet seems incapable of using realistic-sounding instruments, instead relying on synthesized sounds that produce a similar effect to the push of a Casio keyboard 'demo' button. Watching the cast dance straight-facedly to the course tones provided quite the wrong kind of comedy.
As the play concludes with a masked ball and the denouement of unmasking it seems that Malevoli has acted the malcontent for noble ends, whereas Mendoza is just truly malevolent. Malevole triumphs as he reveals himself to be the deposed duke, but I found myself wondering whether the cold-hearted Mendoza with his brazen pursuit of power would have been the better candidate for repairing the state, rather then the game-playing Malevole. This is the opportunity Marston's play allows us, the ability to consider what is at work behind power and the different ways it can be judged. This production brings that to the fore, whilst also highlighting the comedy, often brilliantly crude, that makes it such a romp.
The Malcontent runs at 7:30 every night until Sunday 22nd June.
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