THE WHITE DEVIL. To 15 November.
London.
THE WHITE DEVIL
by John Webster.
Menier Chocolate Factory To 15 November 2008.
Tue-Sat 8pm Mat Sat & Sun 3.30pm.
Runs 2hr 45min One interval.
TICKETS: 020 7907 7060.
www.mnenierchocolatefactory.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 12 October.
Fast-paced, modern dress production hurls the story along.
You may remember John Webster. He was the young boy playing with a rat while spying on the actors through a peephole in Shakespeare in Love. It neatly caught Webster’s fascination with the macabre, and his place as an outsider and dispassionate observer.
There’s no-one here to admire, unless it’s Vittoria Corombona, prime candidate to fit the title in Claire Price’s fair-haired, light complexioned character. Dressed in vivid, off-the-shoulder red, her emotional energy and delight in sensuality over morality is evident on the narrow strip of stage of Jonathan Munby’s production.
Happily a party to murder if it helps get her way, she’s matched by Darrell D’Silva’s Duke Bracciano, using his power and personal force to muscle in on a trial, scornful and proudly confident even as he sports a sash presumably representing high-principled nobility.
Bracciano’s seen off in one of Jacobean Tragedy’s lurid devices, a poisoned fencing-mask. It recalls the poisoned painting he used to kill his Duchess, and Munby intensifies the connection by having him inhale through a face-mask a gas which enables him to view her death remotely.
It’s a sign of the rapidity and clear playing that even the shrieks, ghostly appearances and spurts of blood don’t raise laughter. Murder comes out of nowhere, unashamed. We puzzle over why Iago hates Othello in Shakespeare’s morally disturbed world. In Webster’s chaotic universe Aidan McArdle’s Flamineo needs no cause for his deadly connivances.
He’s Vittoria’s brother, who ignores his mother’s moral pleas. The few moral voices in this play lack the glamour of the damned. McArdle blossoms in appearance as Flamineo plots for the Duke. There’s only success or agonised death in this play, and Flamineo or Dylan Charles’ disguised, self-seeking revenger Lodovico can oppose only irony and pride to their doom.
It’s a pity Lodovico’s says he “made” rather than “limned” his murderous “night-piece”. But it goes with the production's one shortcoming, the short-changing of Webster’s glittering imagery, which is often lost or subdued in moving the story forward. Still, the hurtling playing, on a stage significantly swept before and after, has a lot in its favour.
Giovani/Lawyer: Ross Armstrong.
Lodovico/Doctor Julio: Dylan Charles.
Isabella: Claire Cox.
Bracciano: Darrell D’Silva.
Camillo/Gasparo: John Dougall.
Monticelso/Hortensio: Christopher Godwin.
Francisco: Louis Hilyer.
Flamineo: Aidan McArdle.
Vittorio Corombona: Claire Price.
Zanche: Karen Bryson.
Marcello: Nitzan Sharron.
Cornelia/Matron: Sandra Voe.
Director: Jonathan Munby.
Designer: Philip Witcomb.
Lighting: Hartley T A Kemp.
Composer/Musical Director: Dominic Haslam.
Movement: Georgina Lamb.
2008-10-14 01:43:50