PERFORMANCES. To 15 July.

London

PERFORMANCES
by Brian Friel

Wilton’s Music Gall Graces Alley, Ensign Street E1 8JB To 15 July 2006
Mon-Sat 7.30pm
Runs 1hr 15min No interval

TICKETS: 020 7702 2789
www.wiltons.org.uk/productions
Review: Timothy Ramsden 4 July

Finely acted and played; a rehearsal of artistic arguments.
Brian Friel’s brief play about Czech composer Leos Janacek, resurrected in the modern age in the form of Henry Goodman, looks at artistic inspiration, considers the artist as devourer of life around him, and suggests academics are fortunate they cannot confront the dead subjects of their study.

Which happens to Dr Anezka Ungrovam, a delectable-looking researcher in Rosamund Pike’s incarnation. That’s no irrelevance, for Janacek’s late-life burst of artistic creativity was linked to his relationship with the far younger Kamila Stosslova. Their amorous correspondence found an echo in his late 2nd String Quartet (subtitled ‘Intimate Letters’).

While Leos and Anezka talk, he repeatedly reverting to his late-life lettuce diet, the Quartet’s played, first offstage, then on, with a final movement as a stand-up encore from the notable Brodsky Quartet. It acts first as subliminal background to an artistic argument, before subsuming words in music and finally making its own statement beyond the limits of the play.

Friel essentially provides an argument on the creative process. This is something more egotistic and selfish than Anezka can accept, though her rejection of Janacek’s explanations seems strange given the hard-headed nature of modern research and biography.

The composer spoils her theory on the relation between letters and music and shocks her as a woman. For the great, late love of Janacek’s life turns out to have been an uninspiring person. What matters is that somehow she linked the composer to his visions of perfection. Unsurprisingly, love is blind and leads to idealisation. And it passes away, especially for those in an after-life state.

But there’s a doubt introduced when Janacek plays his final piano piece, which ends inconclusively, either because the sense of waiting on something intangible is vital to the piece, or simply because inspiration petered out. Can artists really explain their works?

This is an elegant play, finely played by actors and musicians, but the arguments, though made specific here, are ones about love and creation that have been rehearsed through centuries. As has the truth, which Friel allows to speak for itself, that the music’s all which is ultimately left.

Leos Janacek: Henry Goodman
Anezka Ungrova: Rosamund Pike
The Brodsky Quartet
Pianist: Christopher Stokes

Director: Lou Stein
Designer: Liz Cooke
Lighting: Hansjorg Schmidt

2006-07-05 08:31:28