BRAND.
London
BRAND
by Henrik Ibsen translated by Michael Meyer
Royal Shakespeare Company at Theatre Royal Haymarket
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 3pm
Runs 2hr 55min One interval
TICKETS: 0870 901 3356
Review: Timothy Ramsden 5 June
An achievement in staging the unstageable, with fine performances plus magnificent setting and lighting.Between his largely forgotten historical plays and the realistic drama which make him a key dramatist, Ibsen wrote two massive dramatic poems. The second is a theatrical festival; its protagonist Peer Gynt spends all life in search of himself.
The other's tougher to perform because it's built round a self-certain character. Adrian Noble has sensibly cast two strong performers as Brand's principle opponents, representing comfortable civic and religious life. They are the equivocating townspeople to this earlier incarnation of An Enemy of the People's Thomas Stockmann. Except Brand's not humanised with Ibsen's later semi-self-portrait hero's human fallibility.
The priest Brand demands everything of a mother, a wife, a congregation. As often in Ibsen, the challenge's set against the severest nature can throw at humanity. Brand rebuilds the church on a larger scale, but it's still too small for his God, so he leads people to the mountain-bound ice church where eventually nature overcomes him.
Only at this point is despised compromise replaced as the opposition to Brand's absolutism. As he dies a voice instructs him the supreme power is the God of Love (it sounds somewhat false as an amplified voice-over: might a chorus have delivered the line, keeping it within the world of the performance?).
Oliver Cotton and Alan David, followed at a lower social level by Sidney Livingstone, give a plausibility to their venality. Claire Price does miracles with Agnes, caught out of her playfully happy existence with Alistair Petrie's tactful Ejnar. The cold, radiant swathe of light enfolding her as Brand insists she surrender the last souvenirs of their dead child, like her simple announcement of her renunciation-induced death, sums up Brand's icy world.
More so, sometimes, than Ralph Fiennes himself. Early scenes display a lip-curling contempt that suggests a hollow superman. It's when the certainty his sinless son could not be demanded of him by his God is upset, that the rich-voiced characterisation develops.
Noble's production mishandles some details: the baby clothes are handed off as if to a stage manager - their surrender should be a key moment. But there's clarity and intensity, aided by Peter McIntosh's set a stockade keeping the terrible majesty of Nordic nature at bay, opening reluctantly until the finally cataclysm - and Peter Mumford's icily hostile lighting.
Mayor: Oliver Cotton
Nils Snemyr/Villager: Jim Creighton
Man/Villager: James Curran
Doctor/Provost: Alan David
Man/Villager: Ian Drysdale
Mother/Villager: Susan Engel
Woman/Villager: Sarah Everard
Brand: Ralph Fiennes
Gypsy Woman/Woman: Jane Guernier
Man/Villager: Colin Haigh
Guide/Sexton: Sidney Livingstone
WomaVillager: Jennifer McEvoy
Ejnar: Alistair Petrie
Agnes: Claire Price
Gerd: Laura Rees
Schoolmaster: Clifford Rose
Woman from Headland/Villager: Karen Traynor
Guide's Son: Oliver Golding/Steven Williams
Director: Adrian Noble
Designer: Peter McIntosh
Lighting: Peter Mumford
Sound: Mic Pool
Music: Mia Soteriou
Movement: Sue Lefton
Company voice work: Charmian Hoare, Andrew Wilde
2003-06-08 14:39:08