SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR. To 23 August.
Chichester.
SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR
by Luigi Pirandello a new version by Rupert Goold and Ben Power.
Minerva Theatre In rep to 23 August 2008.
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat 12, 16k, 20, 23 Aug 2.15pm.
Runs 2hr 40min One interval.
TICKETS: 01243 781312.
www.cft.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 8 August.
Fine production – if you think it is.
Is this freely modernised adaptation still Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters? Well, it is and it isn’t. Which might have pleased the Italian master of perception over reality, whose central dramatic point is summed up in a play title, It Is So, If You Think So.
He makes his Six Characters, abandoned mid-creation by their author, invade the stage where another Pirandello is being rehearsed and, with quiet insistence, demand their story be told. As characters, they know exactly who they are, more than anyone can in life, deriding actors’ attempts to recreate them.
The director/writer team of Goold and Power rush headlong into this, propelling it to a modern TV studio, where a producer is trying to piece together material for a documentary on a young man’s assisted suicide. The relationship between fact, recreation of events and supposition is questioned, as a set built for the suicide story is turned into the setting for the Characters.
There’s nothing quiet about these characters, who have a period look amid the modernity. Ian McDiarmid’s Father has this actor’s dry rapidity, that suggests more than it states and can explode in a moment. He’s loathed by his Step-Daughter whom he meets in a brothel, a scene given renewed violence here.
Denise Gough’s insistently black-hatted, white-faced Step-Daughter, at times roller-skating round the stage, is an uncontrollable Fury. Eleanor David’s Mother runs literally to the operatic, her grief forcing itself out in sung lament. In quiet contrast, the other focal moment shows a child drowning unnoticed.
More lurid and vivid than Pirandello’s play now seems, it becomes more clotted too near the end, as the creators apparently appear, Pirandello and Chichester alike being drawn into an action including bloody revenge on adaptors, while the idea of a ‘version’ is questioned alongside media ‘reality’ and how much anyone knows about what is real.
Noma Dumezweni’s Producer, a fine performance given with a calm that contrasts the Characters, starts concerned with her project and ends silently holding the dead Boy from the Characters, while the older boy, subject of her documentary, is finally allowed to speak onscreen.
The Father: Ian McDiarmid,
The Mother: Eleanor David.
The Son: Dyfan Dwyfor.
The Step-Daughter: Denise Gough.
The Boy: Jude Loseby/Edward Searle.
The Girl: Freya Parker.
The Producer: Noma Dumezweni.
The Executive: John Mackay.
The Editor: Robin Pearce.
The Actor: Jamie Bower.
The Actress: Christine Entwisle.
The Cameraman: Jake Harders.
Runner: Jeremy Joyce.
Director: Rupert Goold.
Designer: Miriam Buether.
Lighting: Malcolm Rippeth.
Sound/Music: Adam Cork.
Video/Projection: Lorna Heavey.
Movement: Georgina Lamb.
Voice coach: Charmian Hoare.
Assistant director: Anna Ledwich.
2008-08-11 13:41:45