JUDGMENT DAY To 17 October.
London.
JUDGMENT DAY
by Ödön von Horváth new version by Christopher Hampton.
Almeida Theatre To 17 October 2009.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 3pm & 30 Sept, 14 Oct 2.30pm.
Audio-described 10 Oct 3pm (+Touch Tour 1.30pm).
Captioned 3 Oct 3pm, 13 Oct.
Runs 1hr 45min No interval.
TICKETS: 020 7359 4404.
www.almeida.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 11 September.
Any light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train.
This play premiered in 1937, when, history tells, Mussolini had the trains running on time. In Italy anyway. In the small town of itinerant Austrian dramatist Ödön von Horváth’s play the trains run late. Yet well-liked station-master Thomas Hudetz is on hand to signal each one. Till young Anna distracts him with an on-platform kiss, sending the express crashing into a goods-train.
Unhappily married to a woman fifteen years his elder, Hudetz has been loyal to his wife till she accuses him of causing the accident. He lies, Anna lies to support him and neither comes to a good end. Guilt pursues Hudetz as he lies and flies, while Anna, alive or dead, alternates between love and hate.
The dead return, as the weight of conscience and fear of discovery wear Joseph Millsom’s plausible Hudetz down. For Horváth looks forward to the post-Nazi dramas of Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Max Frisch in showing the dangerously shifting loyalties among townspeople as rumours gather and self-righteousness has a field-day.
Amid the anger of those, alive or dead, who feel themselves injured, only Thomas’s brother-in-law, perhaps significantly the local chemist: the man-of-science who’s also a healer, maintains a calm constancy of purpose; though even he renounced his sister when she accused her husband. David Annen’s Afons quietly asserts what he believes is right against the crowd or his sister.
Suzanne Burden’s Frau Hudetz is sour-minded throughout, and unsympathetic - though an unsympathetic nature should weigh lightly against even the most amiable liar and murderer.
Serious stuff, and all very dour in James Macdonald’s production, too predictably so, played on a rail-like strip that revolves to various angles but remains comfortlessly austere. When shafts of intense white or red pierce the gloom of Neil Austin’s lighting it’s a signal of danger ahead. Performances are distanced by a general contained quality, emotion reported rather than displayed. Once it might have been called Brechtian but it now seems simply a sophisticated distaste for open emotion.
Playing is solid, sometimes stolid, and the piece intriguing, though dark enough already not to benefit unreservedly from this production's deliberate gloom.
Woodsman/Deputy: Andy Williams.
Frau Leimgruber: Sarah Woodward.
Salesman/Detective/Platelayer: Jack James.
Frau Hudetz: Suzanne Burden.
Alfons: David Annen.
Ferdinand: Daniel Hawksford.
Anna: Laura Donnelly.
Thomas Hudetz: Joseph Millson.
Policeman: Jake Nightingale.
Landlord: Tom Georgeson.
Leni: Julie Riley.
Kohut/Customer: Ben Fox.
Public Prosecutor/Pokorny: Patrick Drury.
Child: Lewis Lempereur-Palmer/Thomas Patten.
Supernumaries: Jennifer Burraston, Gerry Bradley, Miyes Colak, Greer Dale, John Digain, Michelle Dolan, Julianna Fazekai, Yolanda Fernato, Hannah Gaunt, Berit Kuennecke, Judith Loose, Duncan Sanders, Max Saunders-Singer, Lauren Surridge, Oscar Toeman, Kylie Vilcins, Sharon Willems.
Director: James Macdonald.
Designer: Miriam Buether.
Lighting: Neil Austin.
Sound: Christopher Shutt.
Music: Matthew Herbert.
Musical Director: Simon Deacon.
Costume: Moritz Junge.
Assistant director: Philip Thorne.
2009-09-14 09:18:32