TAKING SIDES. To 21 February.
Tour
TAKING SIDES
by Ronald Harwood
Tour to 21 February 2004
Ruins 2hr 25min One interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 15 January at Oxford Playhouse
Temperaments and world-views clash in Ronald Harwood's intelligent, carefully-paced drama.I doubt Major Steve Arnold existed, though his attitudes and manners certainly did and do. German orchestral conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler was definitely a real eminence. Their chalk-and-cheese personalities and world-views conflict in brief, jagged meetings during the post-war denazification programme, uncovering a mix of motives in the great man, an ultimate sense of justice in the army philistine.
In a greyed-out makeshift office, its windows cracked despite sealing-tape, the American Arnold rejoices in his ignorance and dislike of classical music he's first seen, feet-up, sleeping through Beethoven, and only brings in Bruckner as a ploy to catch out the man he refers to as the bandleader'. Any theatre audience can be expected to have a built-in sympathy for his antagonist, especially as the great man receives a classically-structured crescendo to his first appearance, while Julian Glover's majestically commanding figure provokes respect and bows from everyone other than Arnold.
But Harwood's more subtle than to rely on this. Arnold knows his stuff, he admires the German secretary whose father was a noted anti-Hitlerite, and has a scent for Furtwangler's complicity with the old regime. And the conductor's devotion to music, while seeming complete, is arrogantly exclusive, his separation of art from politics blotting out anything inconvenient to his self-image.
Good as Glover is, Neil Pearson matches him, showing Arnold's pride in his interrogation technique and an investigation-weary command (he's hearing one story for the 29th time). He has an assured sarcasm, alternately hidden as impatient politeness, or bursting contemptuously out, not hiding his scorn for the artistically-minded British army officer seconded to him.
Deborah Bruce's production is sure-toned, finely paced and well-cast. Tanya Ronder, if slightly mannered, gives her distraught widow a coherence not easy with a character there purely as plot-fodder. And John McEnery's outstanding as Germany's soul of mediocrity, as predictable and liable to crumble as Furtwangler is complex and determined.
True, the play's so well-balanced there's a lack of the uncertainty that makes great drama, while occasional lines let us glimpse authorial underwear references to Russian composers, for instance, seem incongruous. Overall, though, a classy act classily presented.
Emmi Straube: Ruth Grey
Major Steve Arnold: Neil Pearson
Lieutenant David Wills: Tom Harper
Helmuth Rode: John McEnery
Tamara Sachs: Tanya Ronder
Wilhelm Furtwangler: Julian Glover
Director: Deborah Bruce
Designer: Hayden Griffin
Lighting: Andy Phillips, John Harris
Sound: Matthew Scott
Costume assistant: Chris Cahill
Dialect coach: Charmian Hoare
2004-01-19 01:06:08