THE SECRET DEATH OF SALVADOR DALI. To 31 July.

London

THE SECRET DEATH OF SALVADOR DALI
by Stephen Sewell

Old Red Lion To 31 July 2004
Tue-Sat 8pm Sun 5pm
Runs 1hr 50min One interval

TICKETS: 020 7837 7816
Review: Timothy Ramsden 17 July

Showing that, artistically, Dali had an over-long life and that surfaces can fool a lot of people for a long time.In Amadeus Peter Shaffer contrasts the genius of Mozart's music with its composer's childishness and sexual infantilism. In his review of Spanish painter Salvador Dali, Stephen Sewell shows similar immaturity and sexual grotesquery. But instead of genius there is meretricious facility and opportunism.

On his enveloping red deathbed (variously suggesting vulva and penis), lusting after his Nurse, the pathetic, dying Dali revisits his life in a tumble of brief scenes where he meets other artists, dead long before, and almost all far finer in their output. A brief scene making the short film Un Chien Andalou shows why Dali flitted back to painting while co-director Luis Bunuel, who sees what the camera needs instead of merely calling out outrageous ideas, became a major film-director.

Sewell indicates the outrage began with Dali's hated father, and the death of his loved mother. Ever physically aware, young Dali shows public prudishness with his sister while claiming an incestuous relation with her in private. Sex and oppression saturate his talk and pictures (projected during the show, when the projector works).

Humiliation by strong characters led Dali to submission before both his wife Gala and Hitler. Gala's influence was practical (they needed money), balefully encouraging the market-led production of paintings which suggest Salvador had the soul of an advertising creative'.

At once self-aggrandising and sexually self-abasing, Dali's self-promotional, self-obsessed (Wars? What Wars?) sheen wears increasingly thin. One moment summarises his facile charlatanry: appearing at an American Surrealist exhibition encased in a diving-suit, Dali promises submersion in the unconscious, but within moments is struggling for breath and seeking help.

Stephen Billington captures the painter's wide-open eyes, impulsive enthusiasms and triviality, Jessica Gerger his Nurse's common-sense disgust, and the contrast between Dali's increasingly demure sister and the authoritarian, impatient Gala. (Even she's disgusted at his opportunistic rejection of the avant-garde.)

The kaleidoscope of other, briefly seen, characters comes over less successfully; Lorca seems a tourist-postcard idea of Spanish vivacity, Bunuel a cipher. James Kemp's efficient production benefits from Rebecca Elfverson's setting, half heavy red drapes enclosing the sexually organic bed, half light blue with surrealistically suspended window-frame.

Dali: Stephen Billington
Nurse: Jessica Gerger

Director: James Kemp
Designer: Rebecca Elfverson
Lighting: Irene Pulga

2004-07-18 11:23:49