VINCENT IN BRIXTON: NT on Tour.
VINCENT IN BRIXTON: Nicholas Wright.
NT on Tour Warwick Arts Centre.
Running Time 2 hours 30 minutes, one interval.
Review: Stewart McGill, 15 October 2003.
A quality experience: a qualified welcome.
This play has been well reviewed and winning accolades since it opened at the National Theatre's Cottesloe Theatre last year. I don't want to repeat what has been said or indeed appear to feel that the original reviews have over inflated the work. My response to this play is that Richard Eyre has given it an immaculate and exemplary production that reflects on the time Vincent Van Gogh spent in London.
Based on evidence and considerable reading of his letters it does make a fascinating study of the possibilities encountered in his early life and times. A new cast do a fine job yet Clare Higgins retained from the original is outstanding as Ursula Loyer, Vincent's Brixton Landlady. The simmering relationship erupts and brings high drama to a play that - despite its virtues and interest - failed to hold me throughout.
Why was I not immersed in the play? . . . To be honest it raises the whole issue of Cottesloe transfers to larger settings. Here the intimacy of the Cottesloe is replaced by a larger more formal theatre setting and despite the good auditorium at Warwick Arts Centre I felt detached, distant, unmoved. 'You will smell the cooking' I was told before going . . . well I did not and only when I had moved to a closer seat for Act Two did I see the faces of the actors.
This is not said to be churlish - I do have a fondness for the WAC theatre and Brook's Hamlet worked perfectly here. Rather it must be asked whether these transfers need a whole makeover in set and performance before going out. I have seen Vincent In Brixton but don't feel I have 'experienced' the play. I applaud Peter Mumford's lighting design and the overall attention to minute detail throughout.
it is a quality event at a time when theatre is threatened by tribute bands, tacky junk and TV stars ripping off audiences. So a qualified welcome.
Ursula Loyer: Clare Higgins.
Vincent Van Gogh: Ruben Brinkman.
Eugenie Loyer: Emma Darwall-Smith.
Sam Plowman: Charlie Watts.
Anna Van Gogh: Amy Darcy.
Director: Richard Eyre.
Designer: Tim Hatley.
Lighting Designer: Peter Mumford.
Music: Dominic Muldowney.
2003-10-18 10:21:46