ROSA BERND. To 7 May.

London

ROSE BERND
by Gerhart Hauptmann new version by Dennis Kelly from a literal translation by Anthony Meech

Arcola Theatre 27 Arcola Street E8 To 7 May 2005
Final performances 6 May 8pm 7 May 12 noon
Runs 2hr 5min one interval

TICKETS: 020 7503 1646
www.arcolatheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 30 April

There's a devastating attack in here somewhere but, vivid moments apart, it remains veiled.Gerhart Hauptmann pioneered both naturalistic drama and a kind of dream-imagery play. Chekhov acknowledged and Strindberg allegedly exploited these respective ideas as influences. In this 1903 drama Hauptmann's in naturalistic vein, showing a young woman breaking from sexual convention in a relationship with local magistrate Flamm, something that attracts the attention of loud-mouthed engineer Streckmann, who rapes her.

All the while her father's unaware, carrying on his respectable existence, trying to marry Rose to the serious-minded August, with whom even Christian forgiveness seems a dispiriting thing. It's all harsh stuff, though it's partly muffled in the low-key realism of most performances in Gari Jones' production for the Oxford Stage/Dumbfounded Theatre co-produced Last Waltz' trio.

Somehow, despite a mill clacking offstage and flour-faced workers coming on to wash in a pool, the Silesian rural community never convinces. Pathways form a cross over the stage, an apt enough symbol of religion and destruction, but the homes and open spaces in its interstices are awkward, losing focus and leading to unconvincing groupings.

Amid the low-key acting Fred Pearson's outpourings could seem melodramatic, but I suspect they are closer to the kind of expression the dialogue was meant to provide than much of the rest of the acting. The play seems to call out for the focus and reality of a proscenium arch stage, unfashionable though it is to say so. One age's realism is different from another's and this production fails to find an appropriate voice, though Caroline Hayes shows the blankness and despair that overtake Rosa through her sufferings. The woman who's provided joy receives no comfort and her ever-paler features are starkly contrasted with the surprise appearance of blood announcing her final, fateful decision.

It could be that Rosa Bernd is an inferior drama, but as Dumbfounded Theatre director Mark Rosenblatt selected it out of many plays of the period, there must be something going for it that's only part-apparent here. A shame, as it's potentially the most devastating social critique in the season, taking the attack on society beyond the urban middle-classes. And Hauptmann's a playwright we should investigate further.

Flamm: John Dougall
Rose Bernd: Caroline Hayes
Streckmann: John Lloyd Fillingham
Marthel: Cydney Folan
Old Bernd: Fred Pearson
August: Roger Evans
Mrs Flamm: Yvonne Gidden
Hahn: Jake Harders
Heinzel: Tom Godwin
Kleinart: Dale Rapley
Golisch/Constable: Bertie Carvel
Mrs Golisch: Lucy Briers

Director: Gari Jones
Designer: Jon Baudor
Lighting: Tim Mascall
Sound: Adrienne Quartly
Fight director: Kieran Bew
Assistant director: Eleanor Green
Assistant designers: Anna Jones, Tom Rogers

2005-05-02 22:48:28