BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. To 12 January.
London
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
by Charles Way Music by John Avery
Cochrane Theatre To 12 January 2003
8-9 January 10.30am & 1.30pm
31 December 5,12 January 2.30pm
2-4,11 January 2.30pm & 7.30pm
10 January 7.30pm
Runs 1hr 45min One interval
TICKETS 020 7269 1606
Review Timothy Ramsden 29 December
A dark tale in a production that leaves a lot to the spectator and offers limited emotional range in performances.After his Enlightenment Cinderella Charles Way advances into the tormented soul of romantic Regency England. Cassandra's urbane suitor Knightley may suggest the ordered daytime world of Jane Austen. But Cassandra and sister Belle are Godwins, taking us towards the anguished nightmare of the beast in Frankenstein (whose author Mary Shelley was born a Godwin).
It opens with a double nightmare (this dark, complex tale makes the lower age limit of 6 a minimum). Belle dreams of a sea-storm as it happens miles away, wrecking her father's fortune, dispossessing her sister of her lover and leaving them, as the dreams melt away, exiled in West Country poverty.
It's not long before night returns - with a huge moon in Russell Craig's mainly minimalist set – as father, then (to save him) Belle, are held in Beast's lair. The two worlds are neatly suggested by a circular diaphanous curtain, creating a half-perceived space for Beast's home.
There's a lot of psychology in the script. Cassandra genuinely doesn't perceive the jealousy at the base of her urge to control Belle, which led her to inculcate, then exploit, arachnophobia in her younger sister. The emotion's reflected – less satisfactorily, being little-developed till the end - in the older woman who enchanted, and now seems to semi-control, Beast.
The production demands a lot of audiences; possibly more than it gives. There's little to lighten the prevailing dark of stage and, even more, story. An apparently random spread of chairs and a (non-period) upright piano gives little to look at – though a few brief inserts offer a rose bowered bed and projected beasts leaping against the moon.
Moments of physical-based theatre aren't followed through in a coherent production style. And sympathy with characters is distanced by the acting approach. John Joyce's Godwin lives at extremes: morosely depressed or capering ridiculously. Christian Mortimer's Knightley is lightweight and camp, while – after a long slog for love of Cassandra - he reveals his countryman alter-ego as if it had been a party charade.
At the play's centre, the sisters would carry more conviction and dramatic interest if they weren't forever pressing significance at us with loud-semaphoring vocal cadences and strained facial expressions.
The Beast: Ralph Bolland
Housekeeper: Janet Jefferies
George Godwin: John Joyce
Cassandra: Hannah Lockerman
Daniel Knightley/Jan: Christian Mortimer
Belle: Inika Leigh Wright
Director: Tony Graham
Designer: Russell Craig
Lighting: Jeanine Davies
Choreographer: Dan O' Neill
2002-12-30 11:29:02