All's Well That Ends Well, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
Jan 18, 2018 18:49:05 GMT
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foxa, mallardo, and 2 more like this
Post by Steve on Jan 18, 2018 18:49:05 GMT
Some brilliant revelatory directing turns this into a mournful paean to the hopes and dreams of stalkers.
Some spoilers follow. . .
Comedy this is not. Well, Imogen Doel generates a few laughs, brilliant comedienne that she is, but even she is left, literally and figuratively, on her knees, in Caroline Byrne's tragic vision of what happens to us when the objects, of our desire, do not desire us in return.
Ellora Torchia's Helena is the most desperately lonely and sad stalker who has ever lived. Her father dead, she fixates every fibre of her being onto Will Merrick's Bertram. In the dim candlelight of the Wanamaker, and often carrying a candle with her, a physical manifestation of her lonely flame within, Torchia's Helena is at best a ghost, and at worst a dementor.
Torchia is so brilliantly broken in her characterisation, that we can never hold her fixation against her. Byrne depicts Merrick's Bertram's instinctive revulsion to Helena to be at worst, completely understandable, and at best, eminently reasonable.
Against the backdrop of emotive music, and ghostly imagery, Torchia's dementor teams up with her fellow dementor, Nigel Cooke's King, to squeeze every drop of individuality out of poor Bertram. This is a unique vision of loneliness as a parasite, and of power as unassailable.
Really, Caroline Byrne takes a little loved Shakespeare and turns it into one of the creepiest and most unnerving things I've ever seen.
5 stars. :-o
Some spoilers follow. . .
Comedy this is not. Well, Imogen Doel generates a few laughs, brilliant comedienne that she is, but even she is left, literally and figuratively, on her knees, in Caroline Byrne's tragic vision of what happens to us when the objects, of our desire, do not desire us in return.
Ellora Torchia's Helena is the most desperately lonely and sad stalker who has ever lived. Her father dead, she fixates every fibre of her being onto Will Merrick's Bertram. In the dim candlelight of the Wanamaker, and often carrying a candle with her, a physical manifestation of her lonely flame within, Torchia's Helena is at best a ghost, and at worst a dementor.
Torchia is so brilliantly broken in her characterisation, that we can never hold her fixation against her. Byrne depicts Merrick's Bertram's instinctive revulsion to Helena to be at worst, completely understandable, and at best, eminently reasonable.
Against the backdrop of emotive music, and ghostly imagery, Torchia's dementor teams up with her fellow dementor, Nigel Cooke's King, to squeeze every drop of individuality out of poor Bertram. This is a unique vision of loneliness as a parasite, and of power as unassailable.
Really, Caroline Byrne takes a little loved Shakespeare and turns it into one of the creepiest and most unnerving things I've ever seen.
5 stars. :-o
