Joseph Millson portrays a dissident who is imprisoned for his views in Tom Stoppard and Andre Previn's 'Every Good Boy Deserves Favour.'
A National Theater presentation of a play in one act by Tom Stoppard, with music by Andre Previn. Directed by Felix Barrett, Tom Morris. Music director, Simon Over.
Alexander - Joseph Millson
Ivanov - Toby Jones
Sacha - Bryony Hannah
Doctor - Dan Stevens
Teacher - Bronagh Gallagher
Colonel - Alan Williams
Number one -- never mix music with politics," says lunatic Ivanov in "Every Good Boy Deserves Favour." But with trademark topsy-turvy logic, Tom Stoppard and Andre Previn ignored their own advice. Their dissidents-meet-dissonance piece does exactly that. If few have seen it since its 1977 premiere that's because it requires numerous actors plus an onstage symphony orchestra. But despite sometimes dazzling stagecraft, the National Theater's revival gradually gives way to the feeling there's rather less here than meets the eye and ear.
Puns and paradoxes are absolutely central to Stoppard's audacious conceit. Ivanov (Toby Jones), a triangle player incarcerated in an asylum, believes he's surrounded by and is rehearsing an orchestra. He isn't, and yet orchestral players fill the carefully controlled but otherwise almost bare stage.
He's joined in his cell by Alexander (Joseph Millson). A prisoner who has spoken out against the state, Alexander will be released if he concedes the brutal treatment he has received for his non-threatening beliefs was the correct cure for a mental condition.
A further dimension arrives with glimpses of his young son Sasha (played by actress Bryony Hannah) struggling to understand the official line he's fed about his father's absence.
Blending politics with the merciless, insane logic that policed his early work, "After Magritte," Stoppard's comic exploration of what almost amounts to phenomenology is extraordinarily theatrical. Wholly unmusical Alexander is baffled by Ivanov's delusion, and the contradictions between what they mutually misunderstand and what the audience sees and hears via full-blooded orchestral playing are, initially, highly amusing.
Appropriately, Previn's adroitly played (by the Southbank Sinfonia), increasingly anguished score is smart pastiche. Although he includes an ironic, triumphalist almost-quote from Tchaikovsky's overture "1812," most of the rest of his music -- with consciously over-bright scherzos and agonized strings -- is a re-creation of mid-20th century Russian sound that is Shostakov-
ish.
Gradually, however, this sophisticated series of entertaining textual and musical puns shifts to chillier concerns. A solo cello underscores gaunt Millson's calmly unsentimental delivery of the play's central speech about the horrors of the Soviet state in which legitimate comment is stifled by brute force. Dissenters are removed and incarcerated in prisons misnamed as hospitals.
In Felix Barrett and Tom Morris' bold production, Bob Crowley's set constantly re-aligns the action to the audience on a slowly revolving stage, a perfect metaphor for the constantly shifting angles and arguments used by the state. That power is represented not just via Dan Stevens' nicely highly strung doctor (and violinist), but also by Bruno Poet's fierce lighting, which alternately sculpts and scalds the action.
The unintentional paradox, however, is that Barrett and Morris' attempt to physicalize the piece further weakens it. Added expressionistic dance sequences illustrate state brutality. But impressively performed as they are, they make overly prominent what was originally subtextual. As a result, tension, already in short supply, is diminished.
Despite the resonant aura of political control vs. the individual represented by the father/son dilemma -- and bravura aspects of the staging -- the production reveals the piece as more theatrical than dramatic, more a premise than a play.
Sets and costumes, Bob Crowley; lighting, Bruno Poet; sound; Christopher Shutt; choreography, Maxine Doyle; production stage manager, Emma B. Lloyd. Opened, reviewed Jan. 16, 2009. Running time: 1 HOUR, 5 MIN.
With: Finn Caldwell, Sarah Dowling, Conor Doyle, Jane Leaney, Rob McNeill, Emily Myton, Fernanda Prata, Vinicius Salles.
Contact David Benedict at
benedictdavid@mac.com
Date in print: Wed., Jan. 21, 2009