ANDROMAQUE To 9 May.
London/Coventry.
ANDROMACHE
by Jean Racine.
Silk Street Theatre, Barbican To 2 May 2009.
Mon-Sat 7.15pm.
TICKETS: 0845 120 7554.
www.barbican.org.uk/bite <(i>performances sold out).
then Warwick Arts Centre
6-9 May 2009.
7.30pm.
TICKETS: 024 7652 4524.
www.warwickartscentre.co.uk
Runs 2hr 30min One interval.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 23 April.
A major theatrical event – all it needs are more chances to be seen.
“Do Something Different” the Barbican instructs on its publicity, following its own command by opening the Silk Street Theatre in the area where the Arts Centre meets the Guildhall School. It turns out to be a flexible space, with plentiful width and depth. More than a studio, it has a small-scale epic intensity.
Certainly Declan Donnellan’s production of Racine’s tragedy, on the London leg of a UK tour by Cheek by Jowl, Lille’s Theatre du Nord and Paris’s Theatre des Bouffes du Nord, fits it well, using the potential for both intimacy and distance.
Donnellan is himself doing something different, from his 1985 production of this play with Cheek by Jowl, in English and in the days when the company was a small-scale touring outfit. But it still has the same qualities of spareness and perceptive production detail.
Designer Nick Ormerod employs only a set of wooden chairs, making for a somewhat chilling sense of grandeur. Costumes evoke the 1940s, paralleling the Greek’s conquest of Troy with the Germany’s Occupation of France. It’s possible to see the collaborationist in Camille Japy’s lipsticked, flirtatiously smiling Hermione (her high-styled hair doubtless to be shorn by vengeful patriots after the war) contrasting the troubled severity of Camille Cayol’s Andromaque, torn between her hatred of the Greeks and trying to protect her son Astyanax.
Characters often talk in urgent, hushed tones, as if passing messages under the eye of a hostile authority that could be listening anywhere. Words dart secretively across the space, often over the head of the person being talked about, a device that helps follow the story and suggests the web of motivations deciding the fate of those who sit, unaware.
Among the men, there’s a distinction between he military and the civil forces. Orestes’ eventual removal of his uniform jacket is a simple act that makes a significant statement, as does the sudden tumbling of the chairs that had been lined-up for the temple/cathedral of Andromaque’s forced wedding, where a fall of white confetti turns blood-red as marriage and death mix.
In its stark simplicity, it is a magnificent achievement.
Oreste: Xavier Boiffier.
Phoenix: Vincent de Bouard.
Andromaque: Camille Cayol.
Pylade: Romain Cottard.
Pyrrhus: Christophe Gregoire.
Hermione: Camille Japy.
Cleone: Cecile Leterme.
Astyanax: Mathieu Spinosi.
Cephise: Benedicte Wenders.
Director: Declan Donnellan.
Designer: Nick Ormerod.
Lighting: Judith Greenwood.
Sound: Le Quatuor Beat.
Music: Marc-Olivier Dupin.
Movement: Jane Gibson.
Voice: Valerie Bezancon.
Assistant director: Michelangelo Marchese.
2009-04-27 11:47:01