THE BELLS. To 27 November.
Tour
THE BELLS
by Leopold Lewis new version by Deborah McAndrew
Northern Broadsides Tour to 27 November 2004
Runs 1hr 15min No interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 26 November at Wakefield Theatre Royal and Opera House
A psychological reworking in a production blending atmospheric sound and image.Publicity and programme for Northern Broadsides' autumn tour show a black-clad figure trailing blotches of blood across a white ground towards dark woods. It evocatively summarises the mood and story of Leopold Lewis's 1871 melodrama. Both are caught too in Deborah McAndrew's shrewd reworking.
Outward success masks inward guilt for innkeeper Mathias, whose fortune was founded years ago on opportunistic robbery and murder in the cold, snowy night. The jingle of approaching sleigh bells announced his victim's approach; now the imagined sound haunts Mathias (as Banquo's Ghost does Macbeth) amid the outwardly jovial scenes in his inn, and at his daughter's marriage to the local policeman a marriage of convenience for Mathias, should suspicions ever be aroused.
McAndrew shortens the play, curtailing its considerable staging demands so it can be played on Jessica Worrall's skeletal set. This emphasises the crime through a swinging axe, a dead goose for plucking and suggestions of a body suspended. Director Conrad Nelson provides a crisp production, swathed in a score contrasting open-hearted song and dance with suggestions of agonised conscience in violin, clarinet and musical-saw (at once ethereal and sinister).
McAndrew's version has its greatest success in the long final scene. Until this, the modernisms have been tactfully verbal. Then the forward-driving narrative, offset by Mathias' guilty memories, turns into the happy wedding (incorporating Broadsides' hallmark part-singing and clog-dance). McAndrew combines this with Mathias' trial, the psycho-torture of his bell-induced guilt reaching its crisis amid the merriment around. Friends and family seem to try him, his wife Catherine becoming his judge. The final collapse becomes a leap from his inn-table (centre of his public success) as he imagines himself hanged. Interior and outward existences are powerfully interleaved.
Sean O' Callaghan shows Mathias' plausibility and force, but vocally tends to rampage through the script without much range of tone or pace. With committed playing around (Sarah Parks' cheery Catherine, Adam Sunderland's innocent policeman and Andrew Whitehead's stilt-walking mesmerist who unwraps the guilt, among the more pointed characterisations) this is an ensemble triumph, contrasting a warm community against cold weather outside and the guilty-mind within.
Hans: Jason Furnival
Catherine: Sarah Parks
Sozel: Zoe Lambert
Annette: Catherine Kinsella
Father Walter: Gerard McDermott
Christian: Adam Sutherland
Mathias: Sean O' Callaghan
Dr Zimmer: Phil Corbitt
Notary: Dennis Conlon
Mesmerist: Andrew Whitehead
Director/Composer: Conrad Nelson
Designer: Jessica Worrall
Lighting: Antony Wilcock
Movement: Amit Lahav
Assistant musical director: Andrew Whitehead
2004-11-29 02:47:50