MASTER CLASS. To 8 April.

Derby

MASTER CLASS
by David Pownall

Derby Playhouse
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed & Sat 2.30pm except 8 April
Audio-described 1 April 2.30pm, 5 April 7.20pm
BSL Signed 6 April
Post-show discussion 6 April
Runs 2hr 50min One interval

TICKETS: 01332 363275
www.derbyplayhouse.co.uk
Review: Alan Geary: 16 March 2006

A wordy and demanding play, certainly; but Pownall’s scrutiny of the plight of the artist in a totalitarian state is worth the revival.
David Pownall's play started life on radio - and it shows. An austere and wordy all-male four-hander taking place in real time, it comes fully to life as a stage piece only after the interval, when it’s less static and there’s more entertaining black humour - that word ‘liquidate’ just won’t go away.

It’s a record-breaking interval - literally. During the twenty minutes the audience is out, the same period elapses in the play. As the curtain falls Stalin and the sycophantic Zhdanov are smashing a couple of Prokofiev 78s before the humiliated composer’s very eyes. When it rises on Act II the Kremlin set is littered with a giant pile of plastic, and they’re still at it. Only one record - by that lackey of Yankee imperialism, Bix Beiderbeck - is saved.

Given real time, there’s no space for character development; instead there’s character exploration, chiefly of Stalin. The boorish, malevolent peasant is beautifully caught by Russell Dixon; yet, as he throws vodka after vodka to the back of his throat, he makes his man sympathetic. In interminable monologues Stalin reminisces, not only about former henchmen who have come to grief in his hands but figures from his Georgian boyhood, his parents, and monks at the seminary from which he was expelled. They’re glimpsed fleetingly on video as they come into his mind.

Perhaps Dixon is insufficiently nasty at the points when he drops the conviviality, and he doesn’t make enough of that withered left arm. But, without resort to a bogus accent, he manages to suggest he’s speaking a language other than his mother tongue.

Getting increasingly tiddly along with Zhdanov (Michael Beckley), he comes up with childish games in which Prokofiev and Shostakovich (Terry Mortimer and Christian McKay) are cowed into joining. It culminates in a ‘master class’ with Uncle Joe calling the tune - ironic, since Mortimer and McKay, besides being fine actors, are accomplished musicians (McKay has a separate career as a concert pianist).

In a chilling touch the set incorporates a see-through lavatory in which the protagonists are not only pill-popping but vomiting with fear. It’s a sick society.

Zhdanov: Michael Beckley
Stalin: Russell Dixon
Shostakovich: Christian McKay
Prokofiev: Terry Mortimer

Director: Stephen Edwards
Designer: Andy Miller
Lighting: Charles Balfour
Composer: Jon Nicholls

2006-03-20 01:37:26