SIX PICTURES OF LEE MILLER. To 10 September.
Chichester
SIX PICTURES OF LEE MILLER
by Edward Kemp Music and lyrics by Jason Carr
Minerva Theatre In rep to 10 September 2005
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Wed, Thu & Sat 2.15pm
Audio-described 23 July 2.15pm, 3 August 7.45pm
Runs 3hr One interval
TICKETS: 01243 781312
www.cft.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 7 July
Intriguing material with high-class production and performances, but does the thin lady need to sing?In the 30 years this play covers from 1923, protagonist Lee (Elizabeth) Miller moves between countries, art-forms, lovers and careers. Surprising to learn she spent her last 2 decades on a Sussex dairy farm in raging alcoholic depression. Surprising too that Edward Kemp shows Miller, whose physical beauty and forceful personality put her at the heart of 20s Parisian café society and 30s Surrealism, as someone forever being acted upon.
In a first brief Prologue-like scene she's at home having her pregnancy resulting from a casual affair terminated. She becomes a photographer's model, performs in a Cocteau film. Even her Muse-like quality is naturally there, not part of an existential journey.
The result, despite Anna Francolini's energetic performance, is a disparity between the character others describe as impelling and a life where decisions are often made for her. Accident brings about the photo-techniques she develops with lover Man Ray, Beverley Klein's impressively-played Vogue editor, hearty sort-them-all-out Englishness to the core, directs her to her new, war photo-journalist career.
These six extensive scenic portraits are undoubtedly fascinating, summoning up a society within various societies, a world of free-form innovation. But, ah, it's a musical. Edward Kemp's script hardly needs the extra dimension.
Early on, Jason Carr provides a neat format for introducing the Parisian artists' world, where Lee seeks out Picasso, while the artists admire her for knowing Chaplin. Near the end, the music offers a couple of style-pieces little needed in the action, a post-war German elegy and rip-roaring trapeze artist's man-devouring song, the musical's embryo show-stopper - rather late in the show. But there's so much in Miller's life that even the French artists' number (The Artist of the Day') is neat entertainment at odds with the complexities of Miller's experience, leaving her an enigma amid cameos.
Kemp is Chichester's dramaturg and every production he touches turns out golden. Here's he's almost written a self-contained play that could easily fill out the song patches. Carr, the Festival's music guru, has worked efficiently but the strong script reduces his songs to incidental music or, at worst, interruptions to a fascinating narrative.
Lee Miller: Anna Francolini
Theodore Miller/Pablo Picasso/Roland Penrose: Brendan O'Hea
Florence Miller/Gertrude Stein/Audrey Withers: Beverley Klein
Doctor/Man Ray/Leopold Brylla: Teddy Kempner
Naval Rating/Paul Eluard/Sergeant Magee: Gary Milner
Psychiatrist/Jean Cocteau/Dave Scherman: Mark Meadows
Alice B Toklas/Nimet Eloui Bey/Cynthia/Arianne: Anna Lowe
Aziz Eloui Bey/Major Spiros: Melvin Whitfield
Director: Anthony van Laast
Designer: Sue Blane
Lighting: Paul Pyant
Sound: Paul Arditti
Musical Director: Jonathan Williams
Season Installation Designer: Ashley Martin-Davis
Dialect coach: Charmian Hoare
Assistant director: Paul Higgins
2005-07-13 08:44:11