ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER. To 24 November.
London.
ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER
by Samuel Adamson based on the film by Pedro Almodovar.
Old Vic Theatre To 24 November 2007.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed & Sat 2.30pm.
Audio-described 11 Oct.
Captioned 4 Oct.
Runs 2hr 30min One interval.
TICKETS: 0870 060 6628.
www.oldvictheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 5 September.
Emotion on the grand-scale for those not content with the DVD.
Pedro Aldomovar’s 1999 film contains a pregnant nun, two transvestite whores, a nurse who plays a bereaved mother in hospital-training simulations then is suddenly bereaved of her son, a heroin-addicted actress and a theatre star forever near the end of her tether. AIDS threads its infection from the most likely to most unlikely of these people.
It’s a story of people on the margins of a society suggested by the night-time cityscape that’s one of designer Hildegard Bechtler’s striking contributions to this production. Yet they never feel marginalised, neither in themselves nor, because of their energy and goodwill, to an audience.
Grief, the desperate search for a father, a newborn child, an offer of employment, and the last-minute saving of a performance of A Streetcar Named Desire (with its parallel world of loneliness and the search for love) show the characters’ will to help. Apart from a briefly-seen sex-client, everyone has the capacity for sympathy and support.
But particularly Manuela, given purposive control in Lesley Manville’s strong central performance. There’s good acting all round, yet despite a sprinkling of “Senora”s the contained English voices rarely match the pace of Aldomovar’s film. Nor can the stagecraft, where set changes replace editing - though several are suffused in Alberto Iglesias’ heftily emotional music. And there’s a point to the slow-breathed set change after her young fan is run-over by a car, as a poster showing the face of theatre star Huma Rojo (Diana Rigg, authoritatively presenting a flawed and flustered lead-actor) revolves out of sight with its fixed smile.
But generally the film’s lush world is replaced by a sparser one of small, trucked-sets or line-ups of chairs. This has to be set against Samuel Adamson’s well-crafted labour-of-love adaptation, and the understated fluency, within the staging limits, of Tom Cairns' production. Mark Gatiss provides apt flamboyance as transvestite performer Agrado, with his repeatedly interrupted act and an agreeable nature central to many scenes. Though the stage’s intense focus on character sometimes risks tipping the story towards soap-opera, the play's sweep, contrasting gravity and humour, combines fractured lives with a rare, edgy warmth.
Esteban: Colin Morgan.
Manuela: Lesley Manville.
DoctorStreetcar Actor/Lola: Michael Shaeffer.
Alicia/Nurse: Yvonne O’Grady.
Nina Cruz: Charlotte Randle.
Huma Rojo: Diana Rigg.
Mario del Toro/Gynaecologist: Bradley Freegard.
Agrado: Mark Gatiss.
Client/Alex: Robert Galas.
Nun/Streetcar Actress: Eileen Nicholas.
Sister Rosa: Joanne Froggatt.
Sister Rosa’s Mother: Eleanor Bron.
Isabel: Lucy-Anne Holmes.
Director: Tom Cairns.
Designer: Hildegard Bechtler.
Lighting: Bruno Poet.
Sound: Christopher Shutt.
Music: Alberto Iglesias.
Stage Score: Ben & Max Ringham.
Costume: Moritz Junge.
2007-09-06 09:55:24