DYING FOR IT. To 28 April.
London
DYING FOR IT
by Moira Buffini freely adapted from The Suicide by Nikolai Erdmann, translated by Charlotte Pyke.
Almeida Theatre To 28 April 2007.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 3pm.
Audio-described 14 April 3pm.
BSL Signed 26 April.
Captioned 17 April.
Runs 2hr 15min One interval.
TICKETS: 020 7359 4404.
www.almeida.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 16 March.
Splendid title, fine acting but misses the jugular.
There has to be irony in Moira Buffini’s free version of this 1930 Soviet play turning up in 2007 Islington. Lez Brotherston’s setting shows a segment of some palatial Russian residence, all sweeping staircase and ornamental railing, now divided into rooms for the proletariat. It’s here Semyon Semyonovich Podsekalnikov sleeps with his wife on a landing (mother-in-law’s bagged their room). All this as entertainment for London’s most celebratedly gentrified borough, where house-prices rocket out of the reach of all but the most favoured members of capitalist society.
Not that Nikolai Erdman was bothering about property prices, despite the bourgeois visitors who traipse in when they learn Semyon’s so fed up he’s going to kill himself. Each, from Ronan Vibert’s dapper, articulate reactionary to Tony Rohr’s vehemently wayward priest, who prefers jokes to prayers, wants Semyon to sign himself up to their cause in his suicide note. And they’ll pay, making death his only way to riches – or at least subsistence.
There is a host of strong performances on the Almeida stage, including Susan Brown as the sensible mother-in-law, Liz White as Semyon’s distraught wife, the loud certainties of such as Sophie Stanton’s social fixer and Michelle Dockery’s flamboyant ‘Kiki’, while Paul Rider quietly asserts himself as a fellow-occupant and staunchly communist postman.
Proudly bearing his People’s medal, Rider’s Yegor condemns the bourgeois elements around but joins the suicide-note queue. Rider gives him a grim humourless earnestness that climaxes in his call for literature about the lives of postmen, while his hope the suicide might be used to rekindle socialist fervour carries its own comment on a Revolution losing its drive. No wonder, despite the theatre establishment’s enthusiasm for Erdman’s play, it failed to reach the Stalin-era stage.
For all the quality and skill here, the dark hilarity of Buffini’s opening scene isn’t sustained. Anna Mackmin’s production tries too hard while missing out the essential sense of despair. Even the magnetic Tom Brooke can’t rise above the whirl and bustle all around. Too much bustle, as Dr Johnson might have commented, backed by greyness rather than laughter skidding on black-iced despair.
Semyon Semyonovich Podsekalnikov: Tom Brooke.
Maria Lukianovna: Liz White.
Serafima Ilyinichna: Susan Brown.
Alexander Petrovich Kalabushkin: Barnaby Kay.
Margarita Ivanovna Peryesvetova: Sophie Stanton.
Yegor Timoveivich: Paul Rider.
Aristarkh Dominicovich Grand Skubik: Ronan Vibert.
Kleopatra Maximovna: Michelle Dockery.
Father Yelpidy: Tony Rohr.
Viktor Viktorovich: Charlie Condou.
Stepan Vasilievich: Dominic Charles-Rouse.
Oleg Leonidovich: Gil Cohen-Alloro.
Director: Anna Mackmin.
Designer: Lez Brotherston.
Lighting: Neil Austin.
Sound: John Leonard.
Music: Stephen Warbeck.
Choreographer: Scarlett Mackmin.
Assistant director: Adam Penford.
2007-03-19 00:44:48