WAR AND PEACE. To 18 May.
Tour.
WAR AND PEACE (2 PARTS)
by Leo Tolstoy adapted by Helen Edmundson.
Shared Experience Tour (Parts I & II in repertoire) to 18 May 2008.
Runs: Part 1: 2hr 30min one interval; Part 2 2hr 30min one interval.
Review: Alan Geary: 7 February at Nottingham Playhouse.
This is great theatre; and Shared Experience’s trade-marks are stamped all over it.
Folk might have reservations about the time and trouble devoted by adaptor Helen Edmundson and directors Nancy Meckler and Polly Teale to this sort of thing. With so many proper plays - brand-new as well as long-neglected - up for grabs why bother with an adaptation of War and Peace? Even in five hours much of Tolstoy’s masterpiece has to be omitted anyway.
But, notwithstanding genuine concerns, this production is first-class.
Given the obvious constraints, it’s faithful to the novel, both in narrative and spirit. And Shared Experience’s trade-marks are stamped all over it: there’s the lighting design of course, and the overt concern not only with what the characters do but with their imaginative and psychological depths. At various points Napoleon (Richard Attlee) is seen in conversation with Pierre (Barnaby Kay), for whom he’s an alter ego.
Major themes are present. There’s the distinction between religiosity and genuine nearness to God - the Orthodox music is beautifully done and the icon scene before Borodino is masterly, but when Pierre learns the truth about wisdom and goodness from the peasant Karataev (Des McAleer) it’s a climactic moment. Russian general Kutuzov (Geoffrey Beevers) is clearly right and Bonaparte wrong about the extent to which the “Great Man” determines the movement of history. We get the empty futility of some Russian upper-class lives, for instance when a drunken officer steps out onto a window-ledge to down a bottle of brandy.
Here and elsewhere (for example, in a stunning opera scene that parallels the real-life narrative) mime and empty picture frames are used in multiple ways. From the prologue, where a visitor to a St Petersburg pile talks with an attendant impatient to close for the day, empty picture frames are an important visual element; and in a bare-palace set they make literal sense.
The inevitable doubling, sometimes trebling, of roles isn’t turned into a deliberate humour generator; so good is the acting you hardly notice it. But a laugh comes at an inappropriate moment, when the pathetic Lisa (Sophie Roberts) is crying out in the throes of the childbirth from which she subsequently dies.
Every one of the host of characters, headed by Lisa’s husband Andrei (David Sturzaker), Natasha (Louise Ford) and Pierre, comes over as an individualised person; but it’s, rightly, Pierre who emerges as the central protagonist. Kay plays him perfectly: slightly stooped and wearing glasses because of poor eyesight, slightly dotty, slightly portly, and with curly hair. It’s Pierre’s journey of self-realisation we’re most interested in.
Irrespective of whether you’re familiar with the novel, this is great theatre.
Attendant/Bazdaev/Karataev: Des McAleer.
Pierre Bezuhov: Barnaby Kay.
Count Rostov/Kutuzov: Geoffrey Beevers.
Countess Rostov/Anna Pavlovna: Marion Bailey.
Nikolai: Jonathan Woolf.
Petya/Anatole Kuragin: Hywel Morgan.
Natasha: Louise Ford.
Sonya/Lisa: Sophie Roberts.
Prince Bolkonsky: JefferyKisson.
Andrei: David Sturzaker.
Maria: Kate Wimpenny.
Mlle Bourienne/Hélène Kuragin: Vinette Robinson.
Prince Vasili Kuragin/Dolohov: Simon Thorp.
Napoleon Bonaparte: Richard Attlee.
Boris Dubretskoy: Theo Herdman.
Directors: Nancy Meckler, Polly Teale.
Designer: Angela Simpson.
Lighting: Chris Davey.
Sound/Music: Peter Salem.
Movement: Liz Ranken.
Costume: Yvonne Milnes.
2008-02-10 00:20:05