APOLOGIA To 18 July.
London.
APOLOGIA
by Alexi Kaye Campbell.
Bush Theatre To 18 July 2009.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 4, 11 July 2.30pm.
Runs 2hr 35min One interval.
Tickets: 020 8743 5050.
www.bushtheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 1 July.
Strong pro and anti Vita Sua play with fine performances.
A Captioned performance has advantages for theatregoers generally, revealing how actors shape scripts. And in the case of Paola Dionisotti’s Kristin, how words on a page become a symphony of feelings and attitudes as they’re cooed, slipped out apparently casually, become deadly in a soft-spoken voice or ring with triumphant self-belief.
Theatre has its mothers and mothers-in-law from hell. Kristin, a radical art critic in her sixties, has the capacity to be both. Proclaiming her gospel of art and imagination over the Christianity of her prospective American daughter-in-law Trudi, and decrying her other son’s partner Claire for letting-down art in a TV soap, there turns out to be more, and less, to this mother than meets the ear.
For all she rules the roost - the play’s set in Kristin’s kitchen on her birthday - and loves her sons, neither of them rates a mention in her recently-published memoir. And they’ve become the opposite of what she stands for; Peter, an international banker, and Simon, whom she offers unlimited subsidy as he drifts through life, emotionally disengaged - as she was towards them as children. Simon criticises her absence while she removes glass shards from his hand, a scene recalling Arkadina bandaging her son’s head in Chekhov’s Seagull.
Yet near the end her gay friend Hugh, the only other character of her generation, defends Kristin’s political commitment. And she provides an impassioned humanistic paean to Giotto that’s a good summation of the Renaissance overall (Dionisotti presents it with a splendidly velvet intensity).
The memoir’s called Apologia, which she explains doesn’t mean apology. Kristin never apologises; that’s her strength and her weakness as Campbell’s play moves finely from her ironic putdowns, which can never be quite nailed-down, to her exposure to Simon in the dark night scene.
If anything doesn’t convince, even in Josie Rourke’s sharply detailed production, it’s the final alliance between Kristin and Trudi (kept the right side of silly, while clearly naïve, by Sarah Goldberg). It allows a final sense of resolution but makes an unconvincing overnight rapprochement. Yet it’s a small flaw in a well-characterised, beautifully-acted piece.
Peter: Tom Beard.
Kristin: Paola Dionisotti.
Trudi: Sarah Goldberg.
Simon: John Light.
Claire: Nina Sosanya.
Hugh: Philip Voss.
Director: Josie Rourke.
Designer: Peter McKintosh.
Lighting: Hartley T A Kemp.
Sound: Emma Laxton.
Assistant director: Hannah Ashwell-Dickinson.
Associate costume: Sian Jenkins.
2009-07-02 11:55:56