HENRY IV. To 17 July.
Tour
HENRY IV
by Luigi Pirandello new version by Tom Stoppard from a literal translation by Francesca Albini
Donmar on tour To 17 July 2004
Runs 1hr 50min One interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 29 June at The Lowry
A pity the Donmar didn't trust Pirandello without Stoppard's high-octane infusions.This isn't Shakespeare's Henry Plantagenet, nor France's Henry of Navarre. We're back a millennium to a German king struggling against the papacy's power. Only, this being Italian dramatist Luigi Pirandello, things aren't as they seem. It's like this:
Years ago a wealthy Italian had a riding accident. Falling from his horse, he knocked his head. He'd been presenting Henry IV in an amateurish pageant, woke up in costume and believed he was the character. Servants have been hired to indulge his 11th century delusion - bringing him a lantern, then switching on the electric light when he'd left.
Now friends and family visit. It doesn't go well. Some doubt he's entirely deluded. But the old style suits him. Then, sudden violence from old enmities means he will have to remain in this mock-reality, a life that mocks reality.
It would do so more if Tom Stoppard's terse, sprightly script hadn't updated things from Pirandello's early 20th century to the age of remote-controls where the Italian nobility seem a conscious throw-back themselves. And the contemporaneity emphasises this as a special case, something unlikely to survive a windfall tax on nobles with nothing better to do with their money, let alone the blare of sirens, planes or passing car radio.
Yet, when Christopher Oram's palatial classical columns, later coloured by the theatricality of a red-plush curtain, are enhanced by Neil Austin's mellow lighting and Adam Cork's tactfully atmospheric music, a tableau of Henry and his servants lends his escapism an idyllic tinge (with the fleeting thought, people so rich can usually buy themselves idylls).
Ian McDiarmid's initial remorse scene is a triumph of acting over clarity. Later, his fizzing fury, during Henry's' mental recovery', challenges sympathy by the unpleasant bullying his wealth allows over the hired help.
At least McDiarmid shows a major actor in full force, ably offset by David Yelland's ironic scepticism as his modern-day enemy, while the quartet of servants provide some brio. Other performances are efficient, if commonplace except, surprisingly, the dullest character of all. Robert Demeger invests Pirandello's Doctor with a professional enthusiasm that carries him over the part's prosaic aspects.
Landolf: James Lance
Harold: Stuart Burt
Ordulf: Neil McDermott
Bertold: Nitzan Sharron
Giovanni: Brian Poyser
Di Nolli: Orlando Wells
Belcredi: David Yelland
Doctor: Robert Demeger
Matilda: Francesca Annis
Frida: Tania Emery
Henry IV: Ian McDiarmid
Director: Michael Grandage
Designer/Costume: Christopher Oram
Contemporary clothes: Giorgio Armani
Lighting: Neil Austin
Sound: Fergus O'Hare
Music/Sound Score: Adam Cork
2004-06-30 07:47:02