HEART AND HUMOUR, REALPOLITIK AND GOD
This is a superb play, all you could possibly need: philosophy, historical past prefiguring the current second, humour and character , gorgeous central performances, and confrontations which create a shiver of rigidity palpable by way of the viewers. It is about about music and its inspiration , non secular religion and indignant denial: right here’s JS Bach religious, trying to find a language of God, feeling his age and shedding his sight however kindled to fiery defiant mockery. It is 1747: he has been summoned earlier than the scornfully atheist Emperor Frederick , a bullied son (his father famously a nightmare) who has develop into a shruggingly pragmatic wartime monarch. Yet Frederick is himself a flautist and composer , unable to withstand the shabby, aged near-blind cantor from Liepzig. But , like his sycophantic (very humorous) troupe of courtroom composers, he would like to carry the outdated genius down a bit: the courtiers additionally wish to wind up his son, considered one of their lower-paid quantity. They problem the outdated composer to improvise, within the second, a near-impossible musical conundrum, a fugue based mostly on twenty notes by the Emperor.
This central ordeal is brilliantly achieved, however sparks the immense political and ethical confrontation in regards to the savagery of battle: electrical.
I noticed it on its quick run in Bath in 2023: given the worldwide information was sharply jolted by the confrontation between the resplendently silver-suited Frederick and the homely determine of Johann Sebastian telling him in regards to the noisy licentious soldiery in his distant residence, raping a blind native lady. “It was an honour to be part of your invasion!”. “Intervention!” snaps the youthful man, with Enlightenment conviction about Europe’s have to be modernized by Prussians. He shrugs excuses, and like Putin claims “stolen land”. Topical shiver, once more.
Oliver Cotton’s play was a very long time in creation, however Trevor Nunn’s elegant manufacturing might hardly have fallen on a sharper second for such a scene. At the time I believed it was not fairly an ideal play, regardless of an outstanding solid and the marvellous, volcanic but lovable central efficiency by Brian Cox and Stephen Hagan brilliantly giving Frederick what I can solely name a defensively effete brutality. Well, one thing has occurred to it. Or I used to be simply fallacious. It is among the nice performs of the last decade. Just go. The small tender moments will stick with you too: Nicole Ansari-Cox as Bach’s spouse, praying with him earlier than the two-day journey’s hazard, or – in a brief scene later – defying the officer who calls for billets of their little faculty’s attic . Having seen the extent of Prussian energy within the courtroom scenes, her victory over him acquired a sudden relieved bout of applause. And laughter too meets outdated Bach’s magnificent grumpiness : (“You Prussians can’t fall in a ditch without showing your bloody papers”) . And Voltaire, hanging round courtroom as a philosophical atheist favoured for the second by the Emperor, offers us a line to remove as, 300 years on, our world too is shuddering. Music is, naturally, a part of the reply. For if life is a shipwreck, “remember to sing in the lifeboats”.
Box workplace. trh.co.uk. to 26 April
ranking 5
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