PAINS OF YOUTH To 21 January.
London.
PAINS OF YOUTH
by Ferdinand Bruckner.
Cottesloe Theatre Upper Ground South Bank SE1 9PX In rep to 21 January 2010.
Runs 2hr 20min One interval.
Audio-described perfs & Captioned perfs: see website:
TICKETS 020 7452 3000.
www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/tickets.
Review: Carole Woddis 6November.
Self-clouding brilliance of production.
Ferdinand Bruckner has nothing whatsoever to do with the easily confused Georg Büchner of Woyzeck fame. Bruckner was born Theodor Tagger in Sofia, Bulgaria of Austrian and French parents, escaped to the US after the rise of Hitler and returned to Germany to become dramaturg of the Schiller Theatre in 1951. Pains of Youth (Krankheit der Jugend) was written in 1922/23.
Katie Mitchell’s production of this rarely-performed play, in Martin Crimp’s new translation, if not casting new light on the extraordinary intellectual and artistic ferment prior to Hitler’s rise to power, certainly gives a heated, appropriate representation of the fever and interest in neurosis that seemed to consume European intellectuals.
Freud is in the ascendant; so too Schoenberg’s atonal revolution, not to mention new movements in painting and art, the period of George Grosz and Otto Dix and a group called the Verists. All find an echo here.
Pains of Youth is very much in the spirit of that revolutionary fervour with its group of young medical students agonising on themselves and each other – a Bloomsbury Group, if you like, only more so, or Coward’s Design for Living trio (1933): experiments in how to live.
Mitchell’s typically edgy, clinical, sometimes indistinct naturalistic production nudges us into observing them as specimens, in Vicki Mortimer’s long, modernist living-room lit by natural lighting. Pre-occupation with personal domination, anti-bourgeois ways of living and suicide pre-dominate.
Marie and Desiree share a lesbian relationship whilst Freder, another house-guest, takes pleasure in seducing the maid. Alt, Marie’s languid extentialist friend, and Marie’s ex-lover Petrell who has transferred his affections to Irene, make up this troubled ménage where melodrama is never far beneath the surface.
As a production, it’s a good deal less `cinematic’ than Mitchell’s recent work. But it’s no less enigmatic and frustrating. At its heart are some crucial and fascinating explorations into personal relationships and relationships to art and life. But half the time, words float away and become befogged in mannerism, though as always Mitchell draws out some evisceratingly painful performances, not least from Laura Elphinstone (Marie) and Lydia Wilson (the aptly named Desiree).
Petrell: Leo Bill.
Lucy: Sian Clifford.
Marie: Laura Elphinstone.
Irene: Cara Horgan.
Alt: Jonan Russell.
Freder: Geoffrey Streatfield.
Desiree: Lydia Wilson.
Music played live by: Simon Allen.
Director: Katie Mitchell.
Designer: Vicki Mortimer.
Lighting: Jon Clark.
Sound: Gareth Fry.
Music: Paul Clark.
Music for extended piano/Music Director: Simon Allen.
Costume: John Bright.
Movement: Kate Flatt.
2009-11-10 01:54:36