SCENES FROM AN EXECUTION. To 8 May.

Dundee

SCENES FROM AN EXECUTION
by Howard Barker

Dundee Rep Theatre To 8 May 2004
Tue-Sat 7.45pm
Post-show discussion 6 May
Runs 2hr 20min One interval

TICKETS: 01382 223530
www.dundeerep.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 1May

Dark doings about artistic vision in a powerful production of a forceful play.Dundee Rep stage has become a temporary theatre-in-the-round., with two or three audience rows circling bare-boards. It's ideal for Howard Barker's 1990 radio play about 16th century Venetian artist Galactia - a brutal, at times hilarious, story of artist and patrons.

Scenes analyses a highly individual artist's response to the times - both Galactia's and Barker's. He shows a painter on whose talent (dare one suggest genius?) reposes the demands of others.

This was the fag-end of Thatcherism, which had seeped its way into English arts structures during the 1980s. Theatre co-operatives had to become responsible companies, grants were available to build a new theatre-bar, if not to produce a play.

When Galactia paints the official picture of the battle of Lepanto, the authorities don't like the result. Instead of the glory of Venice, there's a tangle of suffering humanity. It's a good image of Barker's work humanism expressed through tortured suffering. State and church take revenge through the controlled anger of John Bett's Doge and John Buick's incisive Cardinal.

Other women artists want to make Galactia a sanitised role-model, while Irene Madougill's beautifully urbane critic seeks to smoothe the artist/state conflict with words about pictures. The Doge wants his brother, the Admiral at Lepanto (Thane Bettany, capturing Suffici's fine-tuned reserve), painted as focus of attention; it leads only to the figure who has his own secret from the state becoming awkwardly out-of-place.

Meanwhile, like some forgotten Falklands fighter, Robert Patterson's mild Prodo turns his absurd war-wound into a beggar's selling-point. And Galactia's artist-lover Carpeta proves as faithless as he is limited in talent when commissioned to paint for Venice.

It's all played with bleak conviction under a huge looming crucifix religion founded in suffering humanity turned to oppressive icon. And Galactia's epic is represented by light or an empty frame; unseen by the audience as it was unappreciated by Venice. Ann Louise Ross gives Galactia a rugged integrity unto the last moment, while others in Dominic Hill's scrupulous production catch Barker's terrifying mix of harsh humour and clipped aggression.

The Sketchbook: Callum Cuthbertson
Galactia: Ann Louise Ross
Carpeta: Paul Blair
Prodo/Pastaccio/Sailor: Robert Paterson
Urgentino: John Bett
Supporta: Emily Winter
Dementia: Emily Pollet
Suffici/Man in Cell: Thane Bettany
Rivera: Irene Macdougall
Sordo: Stephen Docherty
Ostensibile: John Buick
Official/Mustafa/Lasagna/Sailor: Keith Fleming
The Gaoler/Sailor/Workman: Mark Kane
Director: Dominic Hill
Designer: Neil Warmington
Lighting: Simon Benison
Sound: Anthea Haddow, Kenny MacLeod

2004-05-06 07:13:28