La Strada

Is this a play or a musical?

Or the dreaded. "Play with music"?

A play, with music.


I took creative license with that one, admittedly. It could have well been a Fox's Glacier.

I found this utterly mesmerising from beginning to end. Audrey Brisson is especially stunning but it's an ensemble and company show with every element integral to the impact throughout - music, movement, text, lighting, circus, song, etc., etc.. This show lives vibrantly in every moment, and the only downside for me was that I found it dissolved afterwards, like a dream, where I can recall the sensations of experiencing it but can't quite grasp exactly what was presented.

Definitely a play and not a musical!

I had high hopes for this and certainly wasn't disappointed at The Lowry this afternoon.

I absolutely adored the staging and the inventive ways in which the ensemble were brought into the action, conjuring scenes around them. As the central protagonist, Audrey Brisson is absolutely captivating (and at times quite heartbreaking) as Gelsomina. Such beautiful, haunting vocals too. It would be remiss not to also mention Stuart Goodwin who's thoroughly convincing as the menacing, imposing Zampano.

The often maligned actor musician format here works like a dream and very much adds to the experience and vibrancy of the production, however this is a play with music rather than a musical regardless of what the flyers may tell you. I agree with the earlier comment that they could have made a bit more of the meta theatre scene at the start of act two, particularly as the show is only running at just under two hours including the interval, but I guess when your only regret is not being able to have watched these characters for longer, then I guess that indirectly that's a compliment.

In short, I can't recommend this enough if you're thinking of booking for The Other Palace. It has charm, heart and poignancy by the bucket load. Utterly enchanting.

I saw this last night at the Other Palace and was overwhelmed. The sorcery of theatre has never been more vividly demonstrated. Fellini's 1954 film, La Strada, shot on location in an Italy still desperately war-ravaged, was a classic of gritty, almost documentary-like Realism. Apart from its leading actors its people were real people. Its power was in its undeniable truth.

And yet, with a bare stage and a few props - a collection of wooden crates, three motorcycle tires, two strategically placed telephone poles - director Sally Cookson has conjured up something that captures and transcends that Realism to find the essential soul of the piece. The narrative unfolds in brief, sometimes disconnected scenes through a series of landscapes and towns wonderfully conjured up and heightened by the fluid and ingenious staging, by the music and the songs, by the endlessly versatile cast of 13 actor/musicians and by a leading lady who might have been born to play her role. Her name is Audrey Brisson and she embodies the waif-like Gelsomina with a sensitivity and power that compels our complete involvement with her.

Stuart Goodwin is also excellent as Zampano, the brutal strongman who buys Gelsomina from her impoverished mother, and Bart Soroczynski is equally fine as the acrobat and high wire man known as The Fool, who brings light into Gelsomina's world of darkness. But, as Honoured Guest said above, it's truly an ensemble and company show, every actor and every element fitting perfectly into Ms Cookson's inspired conception.

I don't know when I've been as affected by a show as I was by this one.

Saw today's matinee, and LOVED this. Better than the movie!

Some spoilers follow. . .

This is the first Sally Cookson production that I've unreservedly loved.

"Jane Eyre" was too twee for Charlotte Bronte's dark and romantic vision. While the ending scenes with Rochester neatly made overt the covert sadomasochism in the text, and the singing of the Mad woman beautifully evoked that character's vanishing humanity, characters jogging on the spot were a twee turn-off, and the comic yapping human dog upstaged the text;

"Peter Pan" skillfully brought out the degree to which male infantilisation is at the core of that story, with it's apron-hugging baby of a Mr. Darling acting as Peter Pan's juvenile mirror, while Wendy mothered the boys, and Mrs. Darling's mature femininity demonised as Captain Hook, but the magic of the piece was lost amid exaggerated caricatures, with Tinkerbell particularly screechy, and the children as adults a shade too creepy.

Like Mike Leigh, Cookson plays a dangerous game, working without a script, albeit with an original underlying work that acts as a stabilising crib sheet, and her bravery is commendable. But previously, I have found her style, in which music and her malleable ensemble morph their way into a story's dna, to be at odds with the mood of the story they were telling.

Here though, moods meld. The ensemble are a human wave telling a human story as old as the sea, of isolation and companionship. Fellini's "La Strada" is massively improved by Cookson's interventions, in which Cookson finds her inner Emma Rice, and brings music, theatricality, community and wonder to bear on the story threads, banishing sentimentality, and bringing out instead the beauty, magic and universality of the underlying fable.

In the movie, Fellini was manipulatively sentimental, presenting us with an overacting super-frowny super-lonely clown-faced underdog, repeatedly beaten, literally, as well as buffeted by fate. The movie is saved by Anthony Quale's brutally realistic performance and astonishing shots of a very real war ravaged Italy.

Cookson rejects the exaggerated loneliness, the overacting, and the excessive brutality at the heart of the film's manipulative sentimentality.

The loneliness she replaces with a communal ensemble, who sing, and dance, and commune, and relate with the principal characters. This injects a joie de vivre into the story that reflects a humanity at the heart of the principal characters, bonding them and the story to the hopes and dreams of the audience.

Giuletta Massina's overacting in the film is replaced by a far more realistic and convincing simplicity and innocence in the performance of Audrey Brisson. It helps that Brisson has a hauntingly direct and tender singing voice. Consequently, there is nothing overly forced about Brisson's natural Gelsomina, which she helped shape in rehearsals, under Cookson's supervision.

Brisson, of course, is a graduate of Emma Rice's "The Flying Lovers Of Vitebsk," easily my favourite show that I've seen at the Sam Wanamaker. So Cookson's very Emma Rice approach would have been easy for Brisson to adapt to. I would describe Cookson as Emma Rice (the music, the ensemble, the collaboration, the wonder) with added precision and choreography.

Stuart Goodwin is another Emma Rice graduate, having appeared in a number of Kneehigh productions. His Zampano is less brutal than Quayle's in the film, more gentle in his cadences, evincing more micro-expressions that suggest his character's potential, even as he acts out the full toxic masculinity of the generally inexpressive Zampano to perfection. It is through Goodwin's efforts that Cookson moves beyond the animalistic constraints of Fellini's Zampano, and allows us to see the yearning for love that even the character can't fathom.

In addition to the two principals, Bart Soroczynski gives one of the best supporting performances I've ever seen, as the Fool. It is through him that the theatre of the circus (one of Fellini's perennial motifs) comes alive for us. He can unicycle like an acrobat. He can make us laugh like a clown. He is so truthful and alive in every moment on stage, and he even crosses the fourth wall with grace, addressing the audience at moments without setting off any internal interactivity fear alarms. He is the embodiment of magic and music in a play about magic and music.

If this show has a weakness, it's that Cookson never really found a way to end it elegantly. Around me, audience members who had not seen the film expressed some confusion about the turn of events.

But overall, this is the most magic Emma Rice piece not to have been directed by Emma Rice. It is a triumph for Cookson and everyone involved. It is magical.

4 and a half stars

This is REALLY good. Although a play with music rather than a musical the music is absolutely integral to the production and concept. It grows really organically out of the drama in a way that the music in many quite revered musicals doesn't. Cookson creates so many powerful effects with such economy of means. Her trade mark style of 'lets put the show on the road right here' works more successfully here than in any of her other productions that I've seen.

A totally committed cast; great actors, movers and musicians made one of the most memorable and moving evenings in the theatre I've had for a while.

Go see!

First 20 minutes I hates this, I am not one for violence against woman, but then I succumbed to a complete transformation - Well this show yanks you completely out of your comfort zone, theatre that I absolutely relish, this is the raisin d'être for theatre. This show achieves so little, but says so much and really punches above its weight. Everyone is extolling the virtues of Audrey Brisson on here, with good reason, I couldn't keep my eyes off her, she sandy also with great beauty and passion. But also Bart Soroczynski was superb as the fool also, anyone who can ride a uni-cycle like he could deserves a mention. Stuart Goodwin as the brutish performer who I loathed, so therefore to achieve this great acting chops again on display.

Nothing to add but I echo all the positives and I, too, would never even have considered this but for all the rave reviews here. Good to try something different sometimes and to leave your theatre comfort zone.

Just got back from seeing this tonight and I also really loved and enjoyed this. I have never seen the movie so was blind going in but was looking forward to it from the positive thoughts on here. The staging was really good as well as the choreography and I really loved the music and the story as well as emotion in it. All the cast were great esspecilay Audrey Brisson and Bart Soroczynski. Yeah I would recommend everyone try and see it before it ends.