AS YOU DESIRE ME. To 22 January.
London
AS YOU DESIRE ME
by Luigi Pirandello new version by Hugh Whitemore from a literal translation by Gwenda Pandolfi
The Playhouse To 22 January 2006
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed & Sat 3pm Sun 4pm no performance 24, 25, 31 Dec, 1 Jan
Runs 1hr 30min No interval
TICKETS: 0870 060 6631
Review: Timothy Ramsden 6 November 2005
Glittering, perceptive production if identity-crisis drama.
Pirandello’s plays tend to be short, and this one works well as a straight-through single act in Jonathan Kent’s sleekly glittering production, seeming like a couple of prologues leading up to one main act, almost a single speech. This is from a Berlin cabaret singer, mistress of a German writer, who is then claimed as an Italian nobleman’s wife, lost years before. While Bob Hoskins is busy clearing the nobleman’s emissary out along with the local fans who clutter L’ Ignota’s way home at night, she accepts the Italian claim is possible.
For she has no memory of earlier years. It’s in such devices, which Pirandello uses to explore the uncertainty of identity, that difficulty lies. Is L’Ignota (‘The Strange Lady’ in an earlier translation) consciously following a fancy, or a whim? Is she truly disturbed because of her forgotten years – in which case the play becomes an individual psychological study rather than a wider philosophical exploration? Why does everyone else apparently know who they are, when the author’s return to the theme in play after play probes the theme of identity crisis?
Pirandello’s been overshadowed in British theatre by Brecht, whose concrete insistence on social determinants has made the Italian dramatist’s work seem ill-focused. Here, Pirandello gives his dilemma a political background in war and soldiers’ rape of L’ Ignota. Paul Brown’s settings help Kent’s production provide a journey from the constricted darkness of the Berlin opening to the open space and daylight of later scenes, which the play fills with a family context. Richard Lintern as the husband who believes he’s rediscovered his wife, Margaret Tyzack and John Carlisle as relatives are especially strong in giving a present-tense feel of life.
Then Kent springs the major surprise; an alternative lost wife, a brain-damaged figure in a wheelchair, the absolute contrast to Kristin Scott Thomas’s L’Ignota. No doubt who’s more desirable, given Scott Thomas’s enigmatically seductive performance (shaken only by a very few moments’ self-conscious physical shaping). Bob Hoskins is fine in a role which hardly tests him, but it’s Scott Thomas who gives life to Pirandello’s perplexities.
L’Ignota: Kristin Scott Thomas
Mop: Hannah Young
Carl Salter: Bob Hoskins
1st Man: Richard Trinder
2nd Man: Charlie Walker Wise
3rd Man: Tim Delap
Boffi: Dinbar Lynch
Bruno Pieri: Richard Lintern
Salesio: John Carlisle
Lena: Margaret Tyzack
Ines Masperi: Tessa Churchard
Silvio Masperi: Andrew Woodall
Madwoman: Stephanie Jacob
Nun: Katherine Stark
Director: Jonathan Kent
Designer: Paul Brown
Lighting: Mark Henderson
Sound: Paul Groothuis
Music: Tim Sutton
Fight director: Alison de Burgh
2005-11-13 12:47:22