TAKING SIDES. To 30 August.
Chichester.
TAKING SIDES
by Ronald Harwood.
Minerva Theatre In rep to 30 August 2008.
Mon-Sat 7.45pm, 10 Aug 6pm Mat 2, 13, 28 Aug 2.15pm.
Audio-described 2 Aug 2.15pm, 15 Aug 7.45pm.
Runs 2hr 30min One interval.
TICKETS: 01243 781312.
www.cft.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 29 July.
Less passionate than its new ‘predecessor’ but still stimulating.
Ronald Harwood’s play has aged well over 13 years since its 1995 premier in the Minerva, to which it now returns. But it’s finally met its match. Its nemesis is the playwright himself. For his new play Collaboration, in repertoire with this at Chichester, has such a powerful kick that, seeing Taking Sides shortly afterwards, with the same acting company, puts it in the shade.
Yet Taking Sides remains a valuable, well-structured consideration of essential values, leaving intriguing questions. Philip Franks’ fine production has an apparent shapelessness of characters and furniture on Simon Higlett’s set, matching the rubble-strewn Berlin outside, while always actually having the right characters in focus. The only quarrel is that the final image of Michael Pennington’s Furtwängler atop the ruins, combined with the force of Bruckner’s 7th Symphony, tips the emotional scales too easily towards the great conductor.
Or bandleader, as US Army Major Steve Arnold dismissively calls him. Arnold’s job is to discover if Furtwängler sided with the Nazis; his personal mission is to destroy him.
In light of Collaboration this conflict of righteous philistine and potentially tainted genius makes the American’s mission uncomfortably close to the impact of the Hitlerites. It becomes particularly relevant that Arnold uses files kept by Nazi Hans Hinkel (seen in Collaboration) for the kind of blackmail the Nazis employed. Here, it’s directed at dispossessed violinist Helmut Rode (a splendid Pip Donaghy, showing his character’s underlying sense of mediocrity and humiliation).
And the quiet opposition surrounding Arnold’s confident command, though hardly a thing permitted under Nazism, acquires new force. There’s the keenness of Melanie Jessop’s Tamara Sachs to provide documentation that, as it supports Furtwängler, Arnold won’t touch. Jessop particularizes each moment of her pleading, with an underlying urgency that suggests the years of hope struggling through suffering. Or the sudden, piercing objection of Sophie Roberts as Arnold’s patronized German secretary. And Martin Hutson’s attempts at reason, as a Jewish American officer.
As the central combatants Michael Pennington allows doubt to seep through the shell of that most autocratic figure, the Germanic hero-conductor, and David Horovitch is fine as Arnold.
Wilhelm Furtwängler : Michael Pennington.
David Wills : Martin Hutson.
Tamara Sachs: Melanie Jessop.
Helmuth Rode: Pip Donaghy.
Emmi Straube: Sophie Roberts
Major Arnold : David Horovitch.
Director: Philip Franks.
Designer: Simon Higlett .
Lighting: Mark Jonathan.
Sound: John Leonard.
Composer: Matthew Scott .
Design assistant: Gerry Bunzl.
2008-07-30 15:50:27