MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN, RSC.

RSC Touring

MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN: Salman Rushdie adapt Salman Rushdie, Simon Reade, Tim Supple
Touring: 3h 10m, one interval
Further details see earlier review

Rod Dungate: Birmingham Rep, 29 April 2003

Multi-layered, multi-faceted but a lot of itI caught up with Midnight's Children on tour at Birmingham Rep. ReviewsGate.com covered the play when Vera Lustig reviewed it at its Barbican opening on 5th February. But how does it fare now on tour?

By the interval point I think I'd have disagreed with Vera's summing up that it's 'ultimately unsuccessful'. There is a warm humanity that carries the adaptation particularly in Zubin Varla's central role as Saleem, the baby-swapped man through whose eyes the story is told. The character provides a strong focus for the story and its ramshackle form (reflecting the way we tell our own stories) is at one with the content. In the first half, though, Saleem is separated from the action (it's before he was born): once he becomes part of his own story the distance and much of Rushdie's superb ironic humour disappears. Varla's is a tremendous performance bursting with energy, at one moment youthful leaping about, at another veritably physically falling apart in front of us.

The story is gigantic India's struggle for independence, the hopes, the hopes shattered, the hopes still burning (or are they?) But in a bigger way the story is about all of our hopes and struggles both as individuals and groups and nations. The themes come through in the adaptation but only just. They struggle against a mass of detail. Where the adaptation should have further filtered for dramatic clarity there has been a fight to include as much as possible. The momentum falters amidst a deluge of detail relationships, relatives, videos, packed acting space and history lessons. In the middle of the second half we are conscious of our watches ticking slowly on the whole is just too long and often too much of a muddle.

The pedigree of the show is marvellous RSC, Rushdie, Supple (director) and I went with high expectations despite my colleague's earlier review (we don't always agree.) However, at the end of the night maybe the word remaining on the page is the answer to this one: I felt neither moved nor changed.

2003-05-01 10:03:20