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The Beheading
By Vladimir Nabokov
Adapted and directed by Victor Sobchak
Lion & Unicorn Theatre Company
Lion & Unicorn Theatre
Special Effects William Pine
42 – 44 Gaisford Rd London NW5 2ED
Call 0207 485 9897
Tickets £8 - £10
Tues - Sun 7.30pm
Running time 1 hr 45 mins with intermission
Through 3 August 2008
Trust Me I’m an Executioner
This sparkling play derives from the book ‘Invitation to a Beheading’ by Vladimir Nabokov. It has provoked much analysis and much comparison with Kafka, whom he never read. Written in Nazi Germany and published in 1938, with the war around the corner, it does not seem such a mystery to find some poor sod banged up and awaiting execution for having nothing more than impure thoughts, or ‘gnostic turpitude’ as Nabokov called it.
For the piece to work the audience should be as bewildered as the poor sod himself as to why he is being given the treatment a cat gives a mouse. And so we are. Trouble is, the soggy characterisation of George Xander’s victim, Cincinnatus, in this production means that one couldn’t care less. In fact the toying with him by each of the other characters seemed understandable, even quite a good idea!
Distilling the author’s brilliance in his adaptation, and injecting this cocktail of the theatre of the absurd and theatre of cruelty into his cast, adaptor/director Victor Sobchak has extracted some gorgeous performances from his company. Worryingly, the show opens with a turgid, badly lit, badly spoken Greek Chorus-like opening narration by the whole cast. So it was a revelation to have the play burst into life and energy straight after.
The pace is set from the moment that the prison director, played with a dangerous bonhomie by Avi Nassa, brings the prisoner up to date with his very limited future. In no time his ‘fate-mate’, a prison companion in the person of George Sallis’ compellingly plausible Pierre, takes over his meagre life. Wait for a memorable chess game. In a life of his own creation, Darren-Luc Kelly’s extraordinary prison guard, Rodion, seemed at home in a brand of insanity peculiar to him. Bethany Thompson’s Attorney, hotly, urgently, desperately tried to get the poor sod to be pleased with his fate, and Kathryn Ritchie’s libidinous, dazzlingly self serving wife was oh so watchable. Lucy Christy’s joyously emotional volcano of a mother captured the style to perfection and Andrea Hooymans’ nymphette, Emmie, was so involved with her sexy little life, one felt it was wrong to watch. As if preserved in aspic, a fleeting, but most beautiful depth of life was given us by Christian Hogas as the prison librarian. The Bucharest National Academy for Theater showing its credentials.
Some effort has been spent on costume and the impressive sound, but little or no thought has been given to lighting, and certainly not enough to staging. However, when a gem such as this is being born, the precocious child deserves everything it can get. Given the wealth of talent this company showed, it deserves to be fully indulged.
Recommended
Saul Reichlin
London Correspondent
ChicagoCritic.com
Talk Theatre in Chicago Podcast
Reviewed 20 July 2008
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