THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT. To 5 January.
London.
THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT
by Rainer Werner Fassbinder translated by Davis Tushingham.
Southwark Playhouse Shipwright Yard Tooley St/Bermondsey Street SE1 2TF To 5 January 2008.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm no performance 31 December.
Runs 1hr 40min No interval.
TICKETS: 08700 601 761 (24hrs No booking fee).
www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 28 December.
Cold comfort off-stage and on.
Is it being The Oslo Group that makes the presenters of this production wish to spread bitter cold beyond the fashion-designer protagonist of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1971 play? Staging it midwinter in unheated caverns under railway arches, with wood-bench seating, hardly has audience comfort in mind.
Still, there’s always someone worse-off. In this case, Sasha Behar’s Petra, a female stand-in for 25-year old Fassbinder, besotted and rejected in his relation with a married male actor.
Here that role’s filled by Karen, introduced to Petra by a mutual friend. It’s infatuation at first sight for the designer, a career-opportunity to Karen. Caught in an emotional obsession, all Petra can do is hurt herself and hurl abuse at others.
This is hardly site-specific theatre, through the white-walled chamber through which we initially pass while the six women actors prepare in front of tall mirrors as for a fashion-show, sets the play’s world. It’s hardly that offspring, the site-sympathetic production, except by contrast. The play, like Fassbinder’s film, is all about claustrophobia. Petra’s passion boils and bubbles yet, however distracted, she’d surely have kept the central-heating on.
The great space was probably fun to fill for director Yvonne McDevitt. Clara Perez Adamson cavorts, often with a balloon, in remote areas before coming into focus as Petra’s daughter. It shows at least they’re not a close family, that the wilful Petra’s centre of her own world.
At the start her mother’s heard on the ‘phone, an indistinct voice from Japan; the peripheral, visible mumbling into a microphone for distant calls recreates old technology days and emphasises distance. But why does Petra sign a business-letter her secretary’s written in longhand (laptops all round, but no typing?). This is a production conceived on a large-scale visual level.
Within it Behar captures Petra’s emotional intensity; she’s less believable as the career-success Petra must be. Naomi Taylor is more convincing as the recipient of affection she doesn’t want than as a career-model. Mabel Aitken calibrates their emotional extremes as the uninvolved friend, while Anna Egseth’s silent secretary expresses bitter loyalty, desire or hate in every look and move.
Petra von Kant: Sasha Behar.
Valerie von Kant: Deirdra Morris.
Gabriele von Kant: Clara Perez Adamson.
Sidonie von Grasenabb: Mabel Aitken.
Karen Thimm: Naomi Taylor.
Marlene: Anna Egseth.
Director: Yvonne McDevitt.
Designer: Kimie Nakano, Matt Deely.
Lighting: Richard Howell.
Sound: Hakon Brynjulvsvrud.
Dramaturg: Jens Peters.
Associate director: Nick Blackburn.
2007-12-31 21:03:40