NIRVANA. To 20 March.

London

NIRVANA
by Konstantin Iliev translated by Anna Karabinska

Riverside Studios (Studio 3) To 20 March 2005
Tue-Sat 8pm Sun 6.30pm Mat Sat 3.30pm
Post-show discussion 15 March
Runs 1hr 35min No interval

TICKETS: 020 8237 1111
www.riversidestudios.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 13 March

A rich drama fusing politics and human passions in a vividly theatrical production.Plays about complex married relationships are not new, nor are equations of the personal and political. Playwriting, though, isn't about absolute originality, but giving things a local habitation and a name. The local habitation of Konstantin Iliev's 1982 play is Sofia, Bulgaria 70 years earlier.

It's testimony to the script and Jonathan Chadwick's direction for Euro-theatre focused Gologan Productions that enough is apparent to equate the volatile personal relationship of these two characters, one year married, with the volcanic eruptions of recent political movements and insurgency. What's political can be picked up. What's human comes across clearly.

Even if the washes of jealousy, disgust and contempt that surge through the relationship continually reflect the contradictions of impassioned human nature. The Woman angrily misses the all-consuming relationship for which she left her first husband. The Man, a 36-year old radical writer from a humble village background who now has a literary reputation and warm office at the theatre, has exchanged the rush of ideas for writer's block and finds the beautiful Sofia patrician is no longer exciting once he's obtained her.

So their room is a prison, their marriage making them each other's jailer. She talks of leaving for Paris; their actual liberation takes a very different form. But it's the self-probing, the passion underlying the festering sores, which give the play its dynamic. One that could at times be explored in more subtle acting, with more sharply defined turning-points.

Still, few people are offering London the opportunity to see Bulgarian drama right now, so this is a chance to be grabbed. Especially given the theatrical elements of Chadwick's production - the earthen floor, projections of the real-life inspirations for Iliev's couple and street-scenes engulfed in explosions as video repeatedly brings the outside world to this enclosed room.

And, supremely, Douglas Finch's piano score, which contrasts the old-Europe of The Woman's Chopin Preludes with Berg-like chords bringing the modernist consciousness, then elaborating on the A major and E minor Preludes, turning the second into a tango before incorporating it into a 20th century musical language that brilliantly underscores and intensifies the action.

The Man: Michael Mueller
The Woman: Dolya Gavanski

Director: Jonathan Chadwick
Designer: Agnes Treplin
Lighting: Simon Mills
Composer: Douglas Finch
Video: Boryana Rossa, Oleg Mavromatti, Emily Wardill

2005-03-13 23:41:29