The Daily Telegraph
13th April 1984, John Barber
Not one welcome gift but two. Having lately added the remarkable Michael Pennington to its strength, the National Theatre has now signed on Ian McKellan, a heroic actor unique in his generation.
These two splendid artists rise to the challenge of
Thomas Otway’s “Venice Preserv’d” at the Lyttelton – a sensation in its day
(1682) when conspiracies against Charles II made it painfully topical.
It tells of a plot against the tyrannical Venetian
state, supported for a time by two lifelong friends. Mr McKellan – gaunt,
raw-boned and defiantly recalcitrant – plays misanthropic Pierre, whose nerves
have always been set jangling by the vileness of the world.
Mr Pennington is Jaffier, the gentler weaker soul, a
man of tender feelings and wavering loyalties. He is persuaded by the wife he
adores to reveal the plot to the Senate. When Pierre is arrested, he cuts his
remorseful friend to the heart by denouncing him as a traitor. But Pierre
forgives him before they both go to their death.
A bare synopsis can give no idea of a play which
depends on verse so eloquent it often catches you by the throat and reminds you
that Goldsmith ranked Otway next to Shakespeare.
Peter gill’s taut and thrilling production goes all
out, unashamed, for the high-toned magnificence of the great speeches. This is
not humdrum stuff but the drama of mighty oaths, curses to heaven,
breast-knocking confessions, pitiful prayers and cries of “O my poor heart,
when wilt thou break?”
Dramatically, it opposes senator to revolutionary,
father to daughter, wife to husband and, above all, friend to friend. It is so
well written and played that what might have been bombast leaves one exalted.
It is as near grand opera as the theatre can get without music. If reality is
not like this, so much the worse for reality!
The piece is grimly set, in a dark crumbling
Venetian interior, by Alison Chitty – at once frightening and imposing, Jane
Lapotaire, as Jaffier’s wife, reminds us of her aptitude for eloquent avowals
of passion. The notorious
sado-masochist scene for a corrupt senator (Hugh Paddick) and his mistress
(Stephanie Beacham) is the only tame episode in a revival which otherwise aims
for the big bow-wow and comes off resoundingly well.
The Guardian 14th
April 1984, Michael Billington
Watching a fringe production of Otway’s “Venice
Preserv’d” two years ago, I recorded my astonishment at the play’s neglect by
our major companies. So let me be the first to say that Peter Gill’s
crepuscular new production at the Lyttelton is the most thrilling classic
revival the National has given us in many a season, and that the central trio
of performances by Michael Pennington, Ian McKellan, and Jane Lapotaire proves
that the art of heroic acting is not dead.
What I like is Mr Gill’s downright, unapologetic
approach. From the first moment, when the central doors of Alison Chitty’s
brooding, ruin-arched set burst open, we are thrust into a world of forceful
passion. And this seems to me entirely fitting for Otway, whose theme is
betrayed friendship, ruined love and political corruption.
He shows us Jaffier and Pierre, two Venetian
malcontents, harbouring personal grudges, joining a plot to kill the city’s
Senate. But when Jaffier’s wife, Belvidera, is seduced by a fellow-conspirator,
this Brutus-like waverer is spurred into revealing the coup to the Duke and
Senators. What follows is a positive ecstasy of remorse and atonement, in which
Jaffier comes to realise that his love for his shopped friend is even greater
that that for his wife and child.
Otway’s 1681 verse tragedy may derive from Titus
Oate’s Popish plot of three years earlier; but what makes it a dark masterpiece
is its ability to present us with a series of agonising moral choices in bold,
unashamed outline. Seizing on this, Mr
Gill calls forth a style of acting that recalls the Zoffany painting of Garrick
and Mrs Cibber, but that at the same time acknowledges the play’s homo-erotic
undertow.
Thus Michael Pennington’s superb Jaffier is from
the start a man of intemperate passion in silken cuffs who is easily incited by
Pierre to seek revenge for being reduced to penury by his father-in-law. But Mr
Pennington saves his best until after the betrayal when he utters to his wife a
rafter-shaking cry of “Where’s my friend, my friend, thou smiling mischief?”
And it is no accident that in his death he falls on Pierre’s body in voluptuous
union.
Ian McKellan’s Pierre is a no less striking
creation: a single minded Cassius-liked destroyer inflamed by the idea of
Venice, the Adriatic whore, being devoured by flame and avid for ruination. But
although he presents us with a man who equates liberty with chaos, he also
evokes Pierre’s personal valour and his hunger for reconciliation.
It is a fascinating performance, in that it is full
of restrained bravura that leaves to Mr Pennington the hand-on-heart approach.
And Jane Lapotaire’s Belvidera completes the triangle with a bold, forthright
style that denotes tears, for instance, with the backs of hands stretched across
the brow. Otway’s play calls for unbuttoned, emotional acting.
But Otway is cunning enough to give us evidence of
the sexual corruption that vindicates the complots; and the famous scenes of
perverse comedy came off excellently thanks to Hugh Paddick’s portrayal of a
bent, grovelling masochistic Senator. Mr Paddick crawls on all four, barks like
a dog, craves the whip and is thrown into ecstasy at the prospect of a blow
from the foot of Stephanie Beacham’s hoity-toity mistress.
This is comic and pathetic at the same time; and is
works because it is handled with the same frank, declaratory, fearless style
that characterises Mr Gill’s whole approach. Out of a dark, sombre background
emerges a production that is strong, clear, and ripe with the kind of passion
which often seems a stranger to our stage.
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