IN BLOOD: THE BACCHAE. To 31 January.
London.
IN BLOOD: THE BACCHAE
by Frances Viner.
Arcola Theatre To 31 January 2009.
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat 24, 31 Jan 3pm.
Runs 1hr 35min No interval.
TICKETS: 020 7503 1646.
3www.arcolatheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden.
Theatrically rather than dramatically sophisticated.
It’s hardly surprising to find cultural crossover at the Arcola. In Frances Viner’s new play ideas from Euripides' Bacchae, where stern male rule are torn apart by wild, god-inspired female ecstasy, mix with tensions in 1920s Brazil.
They’re summed-up in the battle between police-chief Gordilho, like Euripides’ Pentheus a representative of order, and the capoeirista Besauro. Capoeira mixes dance, music and martial arts and the climax comes when, as Bacchae’s Dionysus persuade Pentheus to don women’s clothes and, fatally, join the Bacchic dance, Besauro kits Gordilho out in street clothes and leads him to a capoeira session.
We’re enjoined not to concern ourselves too much with Euripides, but it’s hard to ignore something that’s in the title, a programme-note, and the consciousness of many audience-members. Some contrasts are fascinating; an all-male contest replacing the women’s ecstatic fury, Gordilho’s more reasonable police predecessor Cova (a relaxedly authoritative David Gant in smartly casual clothes) warning his successor about repressing Black Brazilian society.
Gordilho, in his tightly-buttoned police uniform attends Mass, where smooth-flowing plainchant contrasts the rhythmic repetitions of capoeira with its background in shape-shifting black magic and paganism. Besauro has the lithe, acrobatic, occasionally animal-like movement of the folk tradition, while the policeman listens to Strauss waltzes on a transistor and fantasises about life in Paris.
But Viner’s script is too schematic, neither making the point pointed-to in the programme about racial attitudes in 1920s Brazil (1920s – with a transistor radio?) nor producing an even-handed battle of ideals. Coke-snorting, prisoner-beating, sexually-violent Gordilho is a gift to Greg Hicks’ nervily intense acting, but incessant insistence on his nastiness and the weighting of the wrongs against, and the authoritative understanding in, Besauro allows little of the debate between contrasting values that makes Bacchae perennially fascinating.
Viner’s mix of self-conscious poetics and flatness varied only by equally self-conscious brutality, bedcomes wearisome before ending in an untidy tying of loose ends. And, when Hicks or Gant are not around to provide a sense of urgency, the acting rarely rises above the functional. Some fine music and movement then, but the words get in the way.
Besauro: Daon Broni.
Cova: David Gant.
Gordilho: Greg Hicks.
Mateus/Perez: Leo Kay.
Chavez: Jorge Goia.
Candomble Priest/Policeman: Miguel Andrade Santos.
Leandro: Luiz ‘Toca’ Feliciano.
Capoerista: Carlo Alexandre Teixeira da Silva.
Percussionist: Pedro Lima.
Director: Noah Birksted-Breen.
Designer: Naomi Dawson.
Lighting: Charlie Lucas.
Music Director: Pedro Lima.
Movement: Carlo Alexandre Teixeiro da Silva.
Voice coach: William Trotter.
Assistant director: Sasha Milavic Davies.
2009-01-14 10:52:54