LIST.CO.UK/FESTIVAL
Reviews {THEATRE}
TURANDOT Bloody opera ●●●●●
The familiar tune of ‘Nessun Dorma’, from Puccini’s unfinished opera Turandot, is played at volume on a Hammond organ, as two men (one a hybrid of Puccini and his fictional prince, Kalaf, the other an androgynous figure, who is, at times perhaps, Turandot herself) scream the aria into the auditorium. Soon the two blokes are engaged in a WWE-style wrestling match, replete with finger biting and blood. The androgyne later performs a routine which combines TV cookery with surgery; a syringe and blade are applied to various fruits and vegetables, which bleed copiously. Such scenes are, in the mind of writer/director Pawel
Passini of Polish theatre company neTTheatre, a part of the completion of Puccini’s opera. Passini has shifted the opera from ancient to modern China (with the assistance of TV and projected film images of the army of the People’s Republic of China and hard-pushed Chinese child athletes). Crashing through this 21st-century vision are the catastrophic events which derailed Puccini’s life in 1909.
The composer’s wife, Elvira Bonturi, pursued his maid, Doria Manfredi, with the accusation of an affair with her husband until Manfredi killed herself with poison (an autopsy showed the maid to have been a virgin). Bonturi was subsequently charged with causing Manfredi’s death; only a financial settlement Puccini reached with the Manfredi family saved his wife from prison. In truth, however, this story is largely submerged within an often surreal, anti-narrative theatrical landscape which veers wildly between the wilfully obscure and the powerfully imagistic. If one is willing to go with the flow of Passini’s images – dark, moving faces projected onto the back wall, miniature mannequins suspended on red wires, a hyper-sexualised Bonturi accusing Manfredi of being a ‘whore’ – there are riches to be found in this uneven, strange, but sometimes brilliant work of radical theatre. (Mark Brown) ■ Universal Arts New Town Theatre, 226 0000, until 27 Aug, 3pm, £12–£13 (£10–£11).
ANTON’S UNCLES Chekhov remixed ●●●●● OEDIPUS Stylised production of notorious tale ●●●●●
Four dapperly dressed men cavort with the stage dressings, dance with each other and utter one- liners with a Wildean frivolity. The members of LA’s Theatre Movement Bazaar are so diverting with their antics that this play’s relation to Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya is at first not clear. Then the scenes of dialogue start and even with the female characters omitted (except as offstage apparitions) the plot emerges easily and faithfully. Like viewing the text through a kaleidoscope it is not so much deconstructed as given a makeover, where the original themes (regret, dissatisfaction, bankrupt dreams) remain untouched.
By removing the women Elena becomes even
more abstractly symbolic of each character’s desires. Their search for her mirrors the playful game of hide and seek embarked upon by the audience as they are led on a twisty turny journey through the source material and invited to look at it afresh.
Prior knowledge of the play is not necessary; this remix is entertaining in its own right. TMB succeed in creating an absorbing riddle where the journey is as much reward as any conclusions. (Suzanne Black) ■ Bedlam Theatre, 225 9893, until 27 Aug, 2pm, £7–£9 (£5–£7).
Steven Berkoff’s quasi-modern retelling of one of Greek mythology’s most notorious plots has got his contrary stamp all over it. An odd and stylised production set around a Last Supper-style table, it pulls you in with a clever image or a carefully constructed set piece, only to push you away again with an awkward contemporary turn of phrase or an unexpected moment of coy humour. The piece is performed with a slow motion,
sweeping style of movement that is as by turns effective and wearing as the peculiarly declamatory delivery. Both features allow Berkoff to build up a sense of poise and gravity and undercut it all at the same time: at moments of great horror the chorus writhes and grimaces and gurns with a solemnity that teeters between the intense and the ridiculous, and when Anita Dobson’s purring Jocasta, on being told of Oedipus’ terrible prophesied fate deeply intones ‘oh . . . my . . . god’, it’s hard to take the moment entirely seriously. For all its archness, though, this is an absorbing production that manages to bring tension to a story where everyone knows the grim ending. (Laura Ennor) ■ Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, until 29 Aug (not 24), 1.20pm, £16–£17.50 (£14–£15.50).
SNAILS AND KETCHUP Dynamic one-man Calvino adaptation from Ramesh Meyyappan ●●●●●
This version of Italo Calvino’s story The Baron in the Trees dispenses with the verbal action and substitutes physical theatre, multimedia and acrobatics to tell its story. Ramesh Meyyappan gives a dynamic performance, transforming into several characters within a dysfunctional family, one of whose members decides to live among the trees of a forest, to the caterpillars and snails of the forest itself.
There’s plenty of skilled mime involved as well as
some pretty scary hanging from ropes and platforms. Meanwhile, Tom Tze Chin’s live score on an electric piano is evocative, capturing both the humour and delicate pathos of the situation and working cleverly with Meyyappan’s athletic and nuanced performance. There’s a good deal to enjoy over the hour’s span
of this piece, but it does, having set out its limits early on, begin to look a little repetitive towards its end. That said, such scenes as that involving the birth of twins to the mother bring some real verve to the evening. (Steve Cramer) ■ New Town Theatre, 220 0143, until 28 Aug (not 23), 5pm, £12–£13 (£10–£11).
18–25 Aug 2011 THE LIST 69
F E S T I V A L
I I
N D B D R E T E P