THE BELLS. To 19 January.

London

THE BELLS
by Leopold Lewis

Rosemary Branch Theatre 2 Shepperton Road N1 17-19 January 2006
8pm
Runs 1hr 10min No interval

TICKETS: 020 7704 6665 (24hr)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 15 January

Theatrically cunning small-scale revival of a grand-manner drama.
A Doll’s House and now The Bells; the Rosemary Branch certainly picks up the downbeat among plays with Christmas settings. Not that Leopold Lewis’s adaptation of the French shocker The Polish Jew approaches Ibsen’s psychological acuity. But this piece, which in 1871 revived the fortunes of London’s Lyceum Theatre and gave Henry Irving one of his most celebrated roles as Matthias the locally respected citizen who’s also a man with a guilty secret, is an above-average melodrama.

The sound of phantom sleigh-bells which haunt Matthias at mention of a 15-year old murder, and the working-out of his guilt through a dream-scene point to something beyond mere plot-tightening tension. To his family, about to extend through marriage to the local police officer (Matthias wants the law on his side), and the customers in his inn, Matthias is a happy man, if suddenly subject to unaccountable fits. They’re shocked to find him one morning apparently, then after a final spasm actually, dead.

Just before this the play has taken audiences into Matthias’ mind in a nightmare trial where a Mesmerist hypnotises him into revealing his secret. Ben Bazell’s production has to deal with all this in the Rosemary Branch’s intimacy, not the cavern of the Lyceum, for audiences to whom Lewis’s tickling hints about Matthias come over as hearty plot thumps.

Theatrically, Bazell has fine solutions, the telltale bells joining with growling piano distortions and, contrasting Matthias’ torment, the innocent sweetness of surround-sound Christmas songs. There’s Toby Koch’s moody lighting and masked figures - including the silent Jew whose death is vividly re-enacted.

Dramatically it’s more difficult, the formality of language written to be projected in a large space coming over as fussily detailed joviality; you long for a sentence or two to be said casually. But the production scores as the past rises and Mansel David’s solid citizen Matthias loses his certainty, his eyes stare and in his dream of judgment his hands tear at his face, then neck, as if grasping at a choking noose. A gesture repeated in his final, public spasm, it gives these Bells a ringing endorsement.

Matthias: Mansel David
Walter: Robert Aldous
Hans: Tim Killick
Christian: Hugo Thurston
Doctor/Judge: Morris Perry
Notary/Clerk of Court: Simon Frewin
Jew: Daniel MacLeod
Catherine: Patti Holloway
Annette: Elspeth Turner
Sozel: Claire Bond
Mesmerist: Cleo Sylvestre

Director/music: Ben Bazell
Lighting: Toby Koch
Sound: Tim Bazell
Costume: Patti Holloway

2006-01-17 01:01:20