LIBERTY. To 15 November.

London/Tour.

LIBERTY
by Glyn Maxwell.

Shakespeare’s Globe In rep to 4 October 2008.
1pm 28 September 2pm 1, 4 Oct.
6.30pm 7, 14, 21 Sept.
7.30pm 27, 30 Sept.
Runs 2hr 50min One interval.

TICKETS: 020 7401 9919/020 7087 7398.
www.shakespeares-globe.org
Review: Timothy Ramsden 3 September.

Ideas outstrip characters in the open-air.
Last year’s Globe season ended with a widely-derided play about the formation of the American Constitution. Yet it took audiences painstakingly through the committee work behind a document that had to reconcile differing opinions, making the point that what starts with political declarations and battles, has a lasting impact only if worked patiently into agreed form.

This year’s season ends with Glyn Maxwell’s play based on Anatole France’s novel Les Dieux Ont Soif, showing ideals and practicality colliding, issuing in hard-lined fundamentalist ruthlessness during the later stages of the French Revolution as young Evariste Gamelin moves from idealism to increasingly fervent execution of the Terror.

First seen bare-chested in the open, practising a speech about Liberty as artistic folk picnic in the sun of the new Revolutionary calendar, Evariste is placed on a district Tribunal where his absolute love of liberty becomes an absolute inclination to guillotine anyone not absolutely sharing Revolutionary ideals as currently defined.

The definition’s done by the leaders we never see, taking away some of the situation’s dynamism; Marat “the people’s friend” and Robespierre “the Incorruptible”; titles that turn assumptions into absolutes.

Early flippancy hardens – though not before it’s become dramatically wearying – under a Terror which (like the current War on) will only last while external hostility makes it necessary, that is, until the world falls into line.

David Sturzaker is a fine Gamelin, determinedly upright in his judge’s formal uniform, redefining terms to suit circumstances with Orwellian thoroughness, and Belinda Lang as a fated lady. John Bett outstandingly brings a sense of both wisdom and fatalism to the déclassé aristo earning a crust (which he’s likely to lose to citizen-thieves, as he is to be harried by the lower echelons of patriotic Parisian patrols), and keeping sane by constant reference to his volume of Lucretius.

But this is a drama of statement; a richness of ideas is declared but never absorbed into the characters, who follow thematic demands. Yet the spacious, open-air Globe often seems to work against Maxwell’s poetic script. Enclosed spaces on tour may allow modified performances that reveal more in the characters.

Evariste Gamelin: David Sturzaker.
Elodie Blaise: Ellie Piercy.
Philippe Demay: Edward Macliam.
Rose Clebert: Kirsty Besterman.
Louise Rochemaure: Belinda Lang.
Maurice Brotteaux: John Bett.
Trubert/Bellier/Dupont/Guenot/Lacroix/Javogues: Gregory Gudgeon.
Renaudin/Navette/Beauvisage/Delourmel/Chalier: Jonty Stephens.

Director: Guy Retallack.
Designer: Ti Green.
Composer: William Lyons.
Choreographer: Paul Harris.
Movement: Glynn Macdonald.
Voice/Dialect: Jan Haydn Rowles.
Fight director: Marcello Marascalchi.
Assistant director: Anna Ostergren.

2008-09-09 12:31:12