CELEBRATED PLAYWRIGHT AND DIRECTOR SHOWCASE VIRUS-HIT WORK AT BRIGHTON SCHOOL
by Dinah Hatch
PUPILS at a Brighton school were treated to the unveiling of a new play by National Theatre resident dramatist and Kemp Town local Richard Crane after the pandemic put pay to its world premiere at this year’s Brighton Festival.
Brighton Girls pupils were treated to the first ever read through of Exit The Queen: She’s The Bee’s Knees, which was directed by multi-award winning BBC director Faynia Williams, who has worked with a roll call of celebs from Mick Jagger and Alan Rickman to Harold Pinter and Robbie Coltrane.
Richard and Faynia are the backbone of the Brighton Theatre company and were meant to open the play at The Latest Bar during the city’s festival this year before taking it to the Edinburgh Festival and onto a London venue.
So when Brighton Girls headteacher Rosie McColl offered to host the first reading with her pupils as socially distanced audience after chatting to Ms Williams and hearing about the cancelled tour, the playwright and director were delighted.
Said Richard: “Faynia and I were in the middle of working on a trilogy about insects, having already written Mozz, a play about about mosquitoes which we took to the Venice Biennale, when the pandemic hit.
“This play is about bees – who are right on the brink at the moment environmentally. In some parts of the world, there are 50% less bees than there used to be and if it carries on like that, this will have a severe impact on our diet as a third of what we eat needs to be pollinated. The play, which has much comedy in it too, looks at how bees organise themselves including how they select the Queen Bee and then decide when she is past her sell by date and kill her. The ruthlessness is all rather Shakespearian – it’s fascinating.”
Faynia added: “It was wonderful to be able to unveil the play at last after the disappointment of it being postponed until 2021’s festival. It’s great to feel the words come alive when the actors read them. Opera singer Grace Lovelass took the role of the Queen Bee and sang some wonderful arias which were magical to hear.”
The reading scattered a bit of stardust over the school hall as on top of celebrated opera singer Lovelass appearing, RSC actor Joanne Howarth and former TV actor Teohna Williams played worker bees. New talent Kane Magee played a drone bee.
Richard added: “Seeing the script come off the page for the first time is always a most exciting moment for the writer, but this was extra special. Now we are really looking forward to the rest of the city being able to come and see it next May at the Latest Bar.”
LOCKDOWN SPECIALS :
FILMED EXTRACTS FROM BRIGHTON THEATRE’S EDINBURGH FRINGE FIRST WINNER ‘PUSHKIN’
BY ERIC PAGE, GSCENE 19 JULY 2020
https://www.gscene.com/arts/theatre/review-brighton-theatre-in-lockdown/
Brighton Theatre’s husband and wife team Richard Crane and Faynia Williams are well-known for their international festival work – from Brighton to Edinburgh and beyond.
But in lockdown they’ve filmed three little poetic gems -originally by Russian poet Pushkin, but here re-written by Richard and directed by Faynia.
Son Sam Crane – who played opposite Mark Rylance in London in Farinelli and the King -gives us a breathless outdoor walk as a setting for a highly topical description of a village ravaged by plague . He meets a “ desolate silence “ everywhere; “ the children and teachers had all going away” he tells us. Although it’s a fair July morning, he comes across a mass grave being populated by “ skin and bones without names” It’s a gripping portrayal.
PUSHKIN: PLAGUE SONG - SAM CRANE
In Tatyana’s letter, Ava Pavlo-Ruffell sits in front of an old master painting , quill pen in hand, and pours out her heart to a gentleman she yearns to have. She has dreamed of him, and the dream is shattered when he actually visits her family – but shattered in a hopeful way. She will “ chip the heavy hours away “ she tells us .But her longing is tinged with fear – fear he may not reply to her letter; fear he may not want her and her “ besotted young girl’s smile”. Ava keeps us guessing, engaged and sympathetic.
TATYANA'S LETTER TO ONEGIN - AVA PAVLO-RUFFELL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPbarcgUGY0&t=3s
Daniel Finlay in The Prophet, gives us an Old Testament revelation, in gory violent language , as God sends him out to convert the unknowing world.
PUSHKIN'S THE PROPHET - DANIEL FINLAY
They are three little diamonds and benefit from a couple of watches.
FringeReView.com. EXCITING WORK
Mozzz! Brighton Theatre
Genre: Absurd Theatre, Comedic, Contemporary, Costume, Fringe Theatre, Short Plays, Solo Play, Theatre
Venue: Brighton and Hove High Girls’ School
Festival: Brighton Year-Round
Low Down Written and performed by Richard Crane, directed and designed by Faynia Williams. Assistant Director Jacquie Roffe, Technical stage Manager John Buss, Costume Ruth Goodall, Image Design/Logo Leo Crane figuration, Mr Crane’s glasses Brompton’s Opticians, Brighton. Song: ‘Every Breath You Take’/Sting – counter-tenor Iestyn Davies. Later tours TBA.
Review
You wonder what that great stalker anthem, Sting’s ‘Every Breath You Take’ – sung here in languid, stratospheric spirit by counter-tenor Iestyn Davies – is doing. Mozzz! proves it’s apt.
Mozzzi starts like that D. H. Lawrence poem, except we have a reply. ‘Am I man enough to out-mosquito you?’ ‘Don’t swat me!’ pleads Richard Crane inhabiting his own Mozzzi in a curious suit with head-light like a fluorescent miner and resembling some curious corner of British humour from the 1950s or earlier.
Crane though can bite. He contradicts himself deliberately, creates verbal pratfalls and the buzz is serious. Though a solo play full of narrative-driven figures there’s wit and ’I don’t mean that’ then ‘yes I do’ establishing a destabilizing yet authoritative presence. And he’s a male, they’re harmless.
Crane’s intimate relation of mosquito facts – the way eyes move from round to hexagonal in their 7-10 day lifespan – build a persona of absurdist sympathy for the male of the species. It’s the female needing blood for her young’s eggs you’ve to look out for. Providing you can tell the difference.
The play’s a shimmering metaphor – warning humanity through the persona of a species that imperils it, and came in 2017, on the cusp of an interesting development.
The play’s a lifecycle. The first of the three sections or Acts (this is a 40-minute piece altogether) treats naturally of adolescence and we’re irradiated with facts and slants on the human condition from a Mozzz perspective.
The possibilities of sex and procreation are buzzed out. There’s a vocal and physical evenness throughout and it’s prodigious enough. Crane’s wondrous energy can’t start exploding in boyish orgasmics as well, though ideally as contrast that might help. What Crane so consummately does is to physically inhabit Mozzz, and he’s helped by the design (though not in this case the video projections) of Faynia Williams, who’s also the director, with assistant director Jacquie Roffe, and Ruth Goodall’s costumery giving Crane his wings: a simple mosquito garb based on a diving suit.
Mozzz tells us that since the mating takes place in an airborne hour or so, that’s a vast span of time in a mosquito’s life. It’s these flashes of humour flecked with wonder driving the narrative that allows Crane first to convey information with an engaging reach, when scaled up or down to human terms.
Second, he’s able to engage the sheer density of alien jokes that in a relatively short time keep you impelled on the narrative and not too distracted from it. So his first attempt at a passing female, with his group of pals, is forlorn. He needs amping up. Another day.
Second Act and we’re into youthful maturity, with a variety of escapades with an older female mosquito who tells Mozzz mysteriously he’s a betrayer, something not worked out till the final act. The female then expires so mating but not procreation sorted, then, and there’s a reason. Mozzz adheres to the plan having observed humanity and he’s got a confession.
It’s not just the mosquitoes plaguing Brazil in 2017 with new variants and new diseases: chikungunya, dengue, and Zika (the one causing brain-shrunk babies to be born); it’s their capacity to take on zoonotic and other transmitted diseases, partly through deforestation releasing such strains – ably absorbed and transmitted by the female Mozzzis out there.
But it’s the third act where the font and origin of this is revealed and just who’s responsible. That’s worth catching. In a dramatic reversal of disease and species, of roles reversed and the modes of scientific dislocation, we’re given a stark warning.
And now, being seven days (or 70 years) old Mozzz wants out, clapped out in Crane’s portrayal, visibly shrinking, flagging down as an old mosquito had once warned him, calling him a betrayer too. Mozzz now does the opposite of what he pleaded for at first. But then we’ve been on a life’s journey with him.
This is a superlatively honed piece, having gone to the Edinburgh Festival in 2018 and here ‘direct from the 2019 Venice Biennale’ via a very different pandemic. Clearly there’s only so much one actor can do with exquisite minimal design and in this place, no access to videos. Visually it’s designed to stun, and closing your eyes sometimes you can imagine it.
It’s also a piece ideally placed to travel like mosquitoes anywhere, and infiltrate schools, academies, universities, conferences and elsewhere with its metaphorical wit lending a hefty message not unworthy of, in its light buzz, Rachel Carson’s 1962 masterpiece, Silent Spring. Then it was DDT. Now it’s personal.
Published September 23, 2021 by Simon Jenner
Mozzz! 5 Stars
May 12, 2017
Mozzz!
The Latest Music Bar
11th to 13th May 2017
Mozzz! A week in the life of an undercover mosquito. A highly topical, witty, sexy monodrama from Festival award winners, director/designer Faynia Williams and actor/playwright Richard Crane. A one-day-old male mosquito looks forward to joining the mile-high club and mating in the air. He invites you to donate just a sip of your blood to nurture his children. But there’s a war on and the most dangerous species on earth is dying by the million. Can science stop the carnage? Whose side is our Mozzz on? World premiere from Brighton’s most exciting theatre company. “Crane and Williams turn the impossible into an art”.
Produced by Brighton Theatre Company
Directed by Faynia Williams
Performed by Richard Crane
Review by Roy Butler, 5 Stars
Mozzz! is a stark, highly-conceptual, tightly-woven monologue that buzzes from strength to strength. Birthed and realised from the creative spark of director/designer Faynia Williams and actor/playwright Richard Crane, it captures perfectly the qualities that make fringe theatre so innovative and exciting.
Mozzz! treats us to a week in the (full) life of a mosquito. In Act 1, Mozzz (Crane) is at once new and pre-adolescent, spreading his wings for the first time, flitting around his fresh world and eager to join the illustrious Mile High Club, and mate in the air. He is naïve to his
actual future, yet aware of what beautifully separates him from the birds and mankind. He is then, in Act 2, in his prime, sexual, virile. He mates, he soars and his wisdom, growing like his sex, is challenged by the female, mid-coitus, and deflated. In Act 3, Mozzz is at the twilight of this life, and he knows more than he ever has about himself, the war between his kind and mankind and why he was tragically destined never to father a new generation of larvae. But in his death is the threat of him really gone?
Mozzz! is about more than the life of a bug. It treats the subjects of life, death, lust, war, genetic modification and environmental awareness in succinct, engaging 50-minute monologue. It is a clever indictment of mankind’s fraught relationship with his environment and the myriad forms of life with which that world is shared.
Crane’s script is a tight collection of words, thoughts, logical extrapolations and flotsam designed to mimic the frantic reasoning of a mosquito personified. It is full of wit couched in quick thoughts and rapidly produced sentence fragments. The humour was infectious, driving a real engagement and identification with Mozzz. The tender and dramatic turns were well-timed and well-paced.
The set and integrated sound, like the script, were pared back to only the essentials. The main stage held a half-dozen collection of joined-up bar stools and a single mosquito net curtain. Cleverly, the complete set for Mozzz! was the whole theatre space. Tables for the audience were arranged cabaret-style, candle-lit and spilling onto the mainstage. The serene cadences of Iestyn Davies singing Sting’s “Every Breath You Take” were soothing and welcoming between acts, interrupted by a buzz you couldn’t place. Before each act, Mozzz is introduced by a loud wooden swat, materialising behind you or beside you off the mainstage. Every aspect of the room was used; at one point Mozzz was on the bar top at the back of the room, and another flitting in the shadows with an attendant buzz, at once discomforting and giving voice to his pervading presence in our lives necessarily – the war between mankind and mosquito. The austerity of the set and sound
were well-constructed complements to Crane’s very economical and effective storytelling.
The lighting throughout Mozzz! was stark, as was the all black costume complete with cap with mosquito antennae, specs for the changing shape of the mosquito’s eyes over its lifetime and a head torch, the symbolic light within Mozzz. On occasion, the stage lighting was dimmed to reflect the darker mood of the play, those junctures where the socio-political cut through the lightness and the humour.
Otherwise, the only way you could follow Mozzz was aurally or by the light on his head.
Williams’ direction and design offered up the kind of production well- suited for pop-up and fringe theatre. There are minimal props, a maximal use of space and a constancy of movement and audience interface that keeps tension and awareness high, right up to the relative stillness and philosophical poignancy in Mozzz’s final moments.
I highly recommend Mozzz! to any audience.
LATEST BRIGHTON MOZZZ!
Rating: *****
May 15 2017
A buzzing tour de force, Mozzz! is quite spectacular in presenting a unique view of an emotional poetic, angry, yet romantic, young, philosophical mosquito! Mozzz is so human: thinking about getting laid, worrying about hurting people, looking askance at the lairy swarm, that you think it’s a terrible pity that he’s only around for one week or so. This would be great as a long-running soap opera (with new mosquitos), as well as a 45 minute play of a single, lone, sex- obsessed one. The impeccable script sparkles with every word, new and old: crepuscular and malarial. Insect terminology jostles with climate change and vector-borne diseases that you are carried along on a life- cycle ride through the battle between humans and insects, the battle between men and women, young and old, those who want to do harm and those who want to heal. The play is so multi-faceted that even its facets have multi-dimensions.
The actor and playwright Richard Crane is superb in unveiling the different dangers and concerns of a lovable mosquito. The enrgetic director Faynia Williams succeeds in bringing another socially conscious and original creation to the stage. The intimate Latest Music Bar is an ideal setting for Mozzz!, allowing the eponymous hero to buzz around both stage and audience at different heights. Well done to Faynia, Richard and Brighton Theatre for this vector-borne delight!
Angi Mariani
Links to MOZZZ! reviews
http://theatrereviews.design/mozzz/
http://thelatest.co.uk/brighton/2017/05/15/mozzz/
Link to MOZZZ! promo film:
Brighton Theatre’s BROTHERS KARAMAZOV
Reviews
*****
Theatre Review: Design: reviewed by Roy Butler
Brothers Karamazov, 5 Stars
October 16, 2017
Tron Theatre, Glasgow
“A cast of four, Thierry Mabonga, Tom England, Mark Brailsford and Sean Biggerstaff (who made his acting debut at the Tron in 1993 in Michael Boyd’s acclaimed production of Macbeth), play the Brothers Karamazov and double as the other principal players and the piece will be designed by Carys Hobbs, with costume by Katherina Radeva, lighting design by Sergey Jakovsky, choreography by Darren Brownlie and musical direction by Matt Regan.
With wit and compassion and underscored by Stephen Boxer’s haunting a capella harmonies sung by the four brothers, Crane’s version is a superlative distillation of Dostoyevsky’s masterpiece, tackling the huge philosophical questions of faith and immortality, the rights of children and nationalism versus the European ideal. In the precarious world of 2017, this work has never been more politically, socially or spiritually pertinent.”
Reviewed by Roy Butler
Brothers Karamazov is a technically brilliant piece of theatre that holds its audience rapt from the outset.
It is the story of four brothers, who, for reasons unique to each, return to the home of their wealthy absent father and find, in profit, their own tragic reckonings with him, with each other and with themselves. Brothers Karamazov is a story of family, an indictment of an age and an enduring commentary of the power of socio-political revolution.
It is understood that Dostoyevsky himself claimed Brothers Karamazov can be expressed in full from the point of the view of the four brothers. In response, Richard Crane offers up a script for a cast of just four, men who assume the primary personas of a brother each and share out all other characters between them with the help of simple devices: a fur robe here, a monk’s vestment there. The result is a script design that is hard-going in the beginning, yet engages the imagination of the audience with ever increasing effectiveness.
With the focus on the four brothers, every other aspect of the production is stripped down. The play starts and ends with a capella song in four-part harmony by the cast, set in the wings above and behind the audience. Song, in fact, is a common feature of the production, done by all brothers, often together and typically harmoniously, contrasting sharply with the schisms that tear them apart. And with their song are interludes of dance which also service to reinforce their fraternity in light of the acrimony between them. It is apparent that the musical and choreographic direction on Brothers Karamazov was approached sympathetic to the requirements of each, a triumph for the cast and, most importantly, for the spectator.
Lighting design centres on the subdued, creating an ambience that presages tragedy and allows the persona of each character and the character of each relationship to shine. Spotlights are used at critical moments of dialogue and monologue to emphasise character development, with the effect of guiding the audience along each core element of plot. (This is considerably more effective in Act 2, where the pace is slower and aspects of conflict more clear.) There is rarely ever a flood of light on set, and when there is it is soft and ominous.
The set itself is a 10-sided dais, complete with a multi-levelled series of platforms at the rear offering up both height and depth for the performance. Soil covers the floor, on which the cast treads barefoot. Aspects of the set become a table here, a raised catwalk there. There are four chairs available at need. The set provokes a very physical performance, one that ties characters to the land (of their father) and their accountability and bonds to each other. It also incites intimacy, a motif of filial connection that imbues the production throughout.
Family, blood ties, brotherhood and the opposing aspects of difference and division become realised also in the costume. The four brothers – Dmitry, Ivan, Alexey and Smerdyakov – are men with different histories and upbringings, passions and wants, and, correspondingly, four different modes of dress. Yet, for all this, they remain Karamazovs. So, at the close of events, when each is condemned to his own tragic fate, they arrive at a place where they intrinsically must wear the same thing, and do. Director Faynia Williams realises the script by clever design. She has cast four very distinct actors to portray the very distinctive brothers, and through choreography, song and tricks of light has created a successful ensemble piece of vanguard theatre that is relevant, powerful and provocative.
Prepare to laugh. Expect to cry. And during its limited run at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, on the centenary of the October Revolution, catch it while you can.
CAST
Ivan: Sean Biggerstaff
Smerdyakov: Mark Brailsford
Alyosha: Tom England
Dmitry: Thierry Mabonga Written by Richard Crane
Directed by Faynia Williams
Set Design by Carys Hobbs
Costume Design Katherina Radeva
Lighting Design Sergey Jakovsky
Original Music by Stephen Boxer
Musical direction Matt Regan
Choreography Darren Brownlie
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The Scotsman
The Brothers Karamazov ****
Tron Theatre, Glasgow
Joyce McMillan
It’s 36 years since playwright Richard Crane and director Faynia Williams were commissioned to create a stage version of The Brothers Karamazov for the 1981 Edinburgh Festival; and if Dostoevsky’s great 1880 novel is itself a timeless classic, then over the years Crane’s adaptation has also acquired a certain classic status, enjoying many revivals, from America and Australia to Russia and Romania.
Now, to celebrate its 35th birthday, the Tron has invited Faynia Williams – its founding artistic director in 1982 – to create a new production for Glasgow, in 2017. And the result is a beautiful, thought-provoking, but sometimes slightly baffling show, in which the novel’s great and ever-relevant themes – the clash between religious faith and scientific rationalism, the nature of morality itself – swirl powerfully round and through a cast of four who sometimes rise magnificently to the challenge, and sometimes seem almost overwhelmed by the complexity of a narrative in which all four Karamazov brothers take turns to play their corrupt old father simply by donning his great fur cloak, and also play many other characters of dream and nightmare.
Sean Biggerstaff is impressive in the key role of the middle son Ivan, increasingly contemptuous of faith in a savage world; Tom England gives the play a compelling moral centre as the youngest, Alyosha. And with Carys Hobbs’s towering lecture-theatre set providing a fitting arena for Dostoevsky’s dissection of human lives and morals, Stephen Boxer’s fine choral music helps to propel the play to a climax of fierce humanistic passion for its characters; despite some moments when drama seems about to be crushed by theory, and by Dostoevsky’s mighty avalanches of prose.
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Brothers Karamazov – Tron Theatre, Glasgow
Posted by: The Reviews Hub - Scotland in Drama, Review, Scotland 16 days ago 0
Writer: Richard Crane after Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Director: Faynia Williams
Reviewer: Lauren Humphreys
Four central performances of considerable strength mark Richard Crane and Faynia Williams’ revived production of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov as the highlight of the Tron Theatre’s 35th anniversary season.
Notoriously difficult to translate, thought to be un-stageable and widely regarded as one of the greatest achievements in world literature, it is a daunting task indeed to take Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 900 page masterpiece and turn it into a play. To distil its grand themes onto a 100 minute running time, would seem like utter madness, but that is exactly what Crane and Williams have managed to do.
While impossible to reproduce the detail of the novel, or tackle all of its philosophical questions, in sticking to its most major ethical debates: faith, free will and, of fundamental importance to the work, familial relationships, this ground-breaking adaptation manages to leave its mark and provoke discourse.
The performances are quite literally grounded in the earth on the functional, compact, multi-layered circular set which is beautifully lit by Sergey Jakovsky’s lighting design.
The quartet of actors alternate roles within the play, while also delivering fundamental characterisations of the four brothers. Sean Biggerstaff (Ivan), Tom England (Alyosha), Thierry Mabonga (Dmitry) and Mark Brailsford (Smerdyakov) gel perfectly together and the differences between the four are clearly marked and beautifully realised. Biggerstaff (Ivan) particularly shines in his thought-provoking speech as the Grand Inquisitor to Alyosha as Christ as does the mercurial Mabonga in his portrayal of Dmitri’s self-destruction. This striking adaptation perfectly mixes the classic with the contemporary and lingers in the memory long after the lights go down.
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The Weee Review – Peter Munro
Dramatised by Richard Crane in 1981, this is an intelligently condensed version of the classic.Dostoyevsky novel. The plot is simple: old man Karamazov is murdered for his money and one of his sons is the culprit. Murder, madness, relationships, the nature of humanity, the role of religion and politics all feature in an epic and heady mix from the source text.
With only four actors onstage throughout, you’d be forgiven for thinking that such an approach shouldn’t work – but it’s a triumph on many levels. Barefooted throughout (apart from one symbolic use of a pair of socks), Sean Biggerstaff impresses the most in the role of intellectual Ivan, brooding and arrogant towards his possibly bastard half-brother Smerdyakov (a deliciously obsequious, warped and rather unsettling Mark Brailsford). Thierry Mabonga is a beautiful and funny Dmitry, the hedonistic son in the family with a voice that could melt honey. Tom England has the slightly thankless role of pious son Alyosha, but is no less impactful as a result.
But that’s not all; at various points our actors don other garments to symbolise they are now playing other characters, including the Devil, some comedy tarts and a Grand Inquisitor. Notably, a fur coat is worn to represent the presence on stage of old father Karamazov, appropriately making the rich, lecherous and frankly appalling old man look like some stereotypical pimp. Mabonga is most impressive in this coat, wrapping himself up in the gaudy garment as he crouches and spits towards the audience, “Ashamed of filth? You should try it – it’s delicious.” Sadly his brief spell as the Devil isn’t quite as nuanced; embodying as it does the slightly camp mannerisms of his Dmitry, there’s no real differentiation.
All of this plays out on a set staged like a brutalistic child’s jungle gym. Arranged in a semi circle around an earth-strewn floor, actors clamber up and down for dramatic effect while the chairs are later rearranged to represent a courtroom. It’s simple yet highly effective: the mud being the earthly constant which taints all action (regardless of location) with a sense of grim futility.
Rather less successful is the structure; Act I is front-loaded with exposition and too much 19th century philosophising on the nature of religion. There is also an awful lot of chanting from our actors, which starts to grate and doesn’t really work as a transition device. Fortunately, less singing is present in Act II, which begins to focus far more on plot and character in the wake of the murder. A blood-splattered Mabonga, drunken on the table and spouting all sorts of flippant and contradictory nonsense – “relevant” or not – is a highlight. With the coat of their father hanging over them like an oppressive ghost, things build and build to a dramatically electrifying conclusion – the final fade to black is entirely appropriate.
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Mumble
Dramatised from the Dostoyevsky novel of the same name by Richard Crane and directed by Faynia Williams: Thierry Mabonga, Tom England, Mark Brailsford and Sean Biggerstaff play the Brothers Karamazov and double as the other principal players.
The play begins with an acapella procession from the balcony that perches above a minimalist stage set, making good use of the intimacy of the 150 seat venue. Part 1 was entertaining with a slight sense of precision in the delivery of a cleverly worked script, and a couple of unfortunate voices off tried to intrude but the guys carried on through the distraction with great professionalism. That’ll be sorted out for the rest of the run. I found myself distracted during the opening scenes, not as I’d expected by the rotation of the cast through other principal roles, but by the sensation that I was witnessing the early career steps of my nomination for Black James Bond – Thierry Mabonga! Shut my eyes and big Sean could’ve been right there in the room.
Part 2 was a much more relaxed and engaging affair where the actors developed into believable characters and I spent less time comparing their performances to more established stars of stage and screen and started to appreciate the economical use of choreography, costumes and design, and use of the space. There’s no point in me giving you a synopsis of such an enduring tale. This particular vintage could be fairly labelled made from concentrate, but is actually fresh and juicy. In terms of review I will say this; I didn’t pay for my ticket but I wouldn’t have felt cheated if I had.
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Glagow University
Reviewed by Hamish Stewart
Tron Theatre, 13/10/17
Religion and power, amoralism and sex, scandal and murder- all awash at Richard Crane and Faynia Williams’s ‘The Brother’s Karamazov’ reboot at the Tron Theatre this Autumn. And what else could be playing with that thematic lineup? This impressive feat of distillation, where the essence of Dostoevsky’s tone remains perfectly intact in the two- hour show, leaves the audience wondering what exactly the world’s been doing for the last 150 years, given the narrative could have been written yesterday.
The first act of the play covers the dispute between father and son over their inheritance and who gets the girl, and whilst the brother’s disparage each other’s philosophies tirelessly. The act closes on the eve of their father’s murder, following the brothers as they each chase their own dreams, angels, and demons. The second act opens on the aftermath of the murder where a formal interrogation and a trial ensues.Alongside this, the four brothers gradually begin to note their own complicity and each begins to endure a personal crisis, from which only some survive. As the plot and name might suggest, the brother’s roles are crucial to the success of the message. Fortunately, the acting is excellent.
The five-strong Karamazov family, consisting of four brothers, and the brother’s father, Fyodor, played by all four actors interchangeably, are cast astutely as the performances they bring to their roles fit harmoniously with their characters’ personalities. Thierry Mabonga (Dmitry) is intemperate and passionate, Sean Biggerstaff (Ivan) is coldly blunt and rational and Tom England (Alyosha) faithful and youthful. That said, the actors also rightly capture the nuance and double-nature of their characters, allowing the audience to feel their visceral emotions with them. Each actor performs with their whole body and countenance; at one point when Biggerstaff is amongst the audience, his knuckles and eyes brim with energy. The staging and expressive movement of the actors also works beautifully alongside the dialogue to bleed the source material for all it’s worth.
Crane and Williams’s play continues to have powerful resonance 35 years after its debut because we still have no answers to the questions it asks. Its message – that humanity’s embrace of materialism (our insufficient replacement for God and reason) has left us with greater uncertainty, anxiety, and doubt than we started with – is a as timely as it was in 1880. When this play goes out of circulation therefore, there will be reason for joy and sorrow.
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I AM A WAREHOUSE
