PICTURES FROM AN EXHIBITION To 23 May.
London.
PICTURES FROM AN EXHIBITION
by Modest Mussorgsky script by James Fenton.
Young Vic Theatre 66 The Cut SE1 8LZ To 23 May 2009.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 2.30pm.
Runs 1hr 30min No interval.
TICKETS: 020 7922 2922.
www.youngvictheatre.org
Review: Carole Woddis 13 May
Illuminating Pictures.
Having successfully yoked English National Opera to their wagon last year with stagings of Harrison Birtwistle’s Punch & Judy and Olga Neuwirth's Lost Highway, David Lan, the Young Vic’s enterprising artistic director, has now gone for dance-theatre in this collaboration with Sadler’s Wells based on Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.
Interestingly, changing the original title `at’ to `from’ an exhibition must point to director Daniel Kramer’s desire to emphasise this work as an entirely fresh entity. And emphasis is what Kramer rejoices in. Widely acclaimed for his account of Punch & Judy, previous theatre productions have included revivals of Angels in America, Hair and Woyzeck, from which you will see he has a fondness for the dramatic, the melodramatic even.
That is certainly what he has delivered here – a psychological nightmare based on the paintings by Mussorgsky’s friend, artist Victor Hartmann, to whom the original piano pieces were dedicated. Kramer brings the pictures to life but links them, often garishly, to the imagined tortured inner life of the music’s creator.
Phallic protuberances, hairy witches and demonic ghosts abound, danced by a magnificently versatile, ad hoc group of dancers taken from some of the brightest and best companies around, including Matthew Bourne, The Cholmondeleys, The Featherstonehaughs and Punchdrunk and led by a hypnotically masochistic performance from actor Edward Hogg (a fine Jesus in the Almeida’s The Last Days of Judas Iscariot last year) as the increasingly alcoholic, epileptic Mussorgsky, haunted by childhood demons and homosexual angst.
It’s maybe a partial, sensationalist view but Kramer, apart from the power of the dancers he has to call on, is also supported by a superb creative team: text by award-winning poet and critic, James Fenton; designer Richard Hudson who supplies a set of claustrophobic, perspective crunching doors; stunning lighting from Peter Mumford and not least Frauke Requardt whose choreography is both effective and occasionally inspired.
Alongside the dancing bears, red-coated cossacks and perverse chickens, there is one luminous moment – the chorus of male and female dancers, top halves all naked, swaying in long skirts: a metrosexual lullaby of comfort and confusion.
Performers: Conor Doyle, Kath Duggan, Edward Hogg, Carl Joseph, Rob McNeill, Michela Meazza, Inn Pang Ooi, Vinicius Salles, Margarita Zafrilla Olayo.
Director/Choreographer: Daniel Kramer.
Choreographers: Frauke Requardt.
Design: Richard Hudson.
Light: Peter Mumford.
Sound: Fergus O’Hare.
Musical Supervision & Arrangement: Joel Fram.
Additional piano arrangements: Carl Joseph.
Supernumerary coordinator: Kate Ward.
Swing: Christian From.
Assistant director: Andrew Steggall & Natasha Nixon.
Assistant designer: Justin Arienti.
2009-05-15 00:07:54