THE END OF THE SENTENCE. To 9 August.
London
THE END OF THE SENTENCE
by Jeremy Freeson
Finborough Theatre To 9 August 2003
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Sun 3.30pm Mat 6 August 3.30pm
Runs 1hr 45min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7373 3842
Review: Timothy Ramsden 20 July
Russia new and old unite in a production whose elements have less unity.A strange experience: script, direction, acting all have things going for them, but somehow they're not all going in the same direction. Confusion starts at the beginning, with people lining up as in a food queue. But they're waiting to see Maria. She wears a white coat, a hygenic medical note undercut by the cigarette she's holding.
She seems some sort of diviner, a wise woman telling fortunes. And asking for money. Shawoman or charlatan? Hard to tell or, indeed, what part she plays in a story that focuses on one of her customers, a smart-suited lawyer, for all he's seeking advice in the manner of a 19th century Russian peasant. It's on behalf of a client, who's an acknowledged robber.
The play uses reflective back-flashes (full scenes more than flashes) to build a portrait of Sergei, the half-Russian, half-Chechen bandit whose cold-blooded violence doesn't prevent fear at offending a gypsy family. Superstition reigns at trigger-point just as it seeps beneath the facades of modern institutions.
But Freeson's aiming at other complexities. While Sasha's building a case for his client, Sergei's cementing a relationship with the lawyer's wife Valentina. Tough yet tender as any noir protagonist, the mix doesn't quite come off it's too familiar a narrative ploy after Freeson's surprise image of a Russia focused as much on past as present.
Adam Meggido's production pulls back the performances, making them understatedly suited to the Finborough's intimacy but creating a disjunction between the urgency and passion of many scenes. It avoids melodrama but is curiously bloodless.
Actors look the appropriate part, from Ben Nealon's respectably harried Sasha, Samia Rida as the anxious middle-class wife who knows how to look her best, through Jiggy Bhore's professional cool as Maria and anxiety as an old gypsy woman to William Arthur as an eternal sidekick whose malice will never erupt in force and Jason Simmons' strong-featured, clean-cut villain.
Vocally, things are more varied. Simmons suggests Sergei's psychotic volatility and Bhore gives beautifully modulated characterisations. But there's a vocal stiffness that too often limits characterisation.
No washout then, but hardly a clean sweep in making a vigorous case for its themes and story.
The Intermediary/Tamara's Son: William Arthur
Maria/Tamara: Jiggy Bhore
Woman/Tamara's Daughter: Liz Hallyburton
Sasha: Ben Nealon
Valentina: Samia Rida
Sergei: Jason Simmons
Maria's Assistant/Friend/Man on Train: Stuart Slavicky
Boy: Scott Knight/Tigran Manukyan/Chaden Wilson-Groves
Director: Adam Meggido
Designer: John Marsh
Lighting: Mark Dymock
Costume: Mia Flodquist
2003-07-23 14:22:31