TOO DEEP FOR TEARS
Perhaps this imagining of the young Vincent gains extra power after the emotional hit of the recent Van Gogh at Arles exhibition; starry nights and wonder lie fresh in memory, , signals of immortal beauty from his last years. But even without that reflection, Nicholas Wright’s 2002 play is more than worth a revival, first in 13 years, and in this intimate little arena Georgia Green’s tight production is immaculately cast and focused. Naimh Cusack gives us the landlady Ursula in dignified, housewifely Victorian widowhood , laying down terms to Jeroen Frank Kales as the gawky young foreigner, with Rawaed Asde as the laughing youg charmer Sam in the other room , who is courting AyeshaOstler’s Eugenie, daughter of the house. Add, in brief but arresting moments later , Amber van der Brugge as Vincent’s sister. She makes the most of a basilisk unforgiving Nonconformist eye and a savage way with a clanging mop-bucket.
They are all note-perfect in the play’s moods, passions, and lines of drop-dead flat sudden comedy (especially Cusack). But the revelation is young Kales, on his first professional job combining the passionate innocent sensibility of young Vincent with gawky absurdity, sudden outbursts and a peculiarly ultra-direct Dutchness which,I can tell you from sailing with that nation, reliably throws us Britons offcourse every time.
In his intense scenes with Ursula – it is a joy to see a debutant and a veteran lead playing so perfectly and geneously off one another – it could have been crude to give glancing references to stars in deep blackness or sudden intense feeling for every knot of wood. Wright’s skill averts that, and the evocation of their shared depressive bipolarity is starkly convincing..
Ursula’s long unresolved grief and the young man’s answering reflection create a painful beauty of connection,defying all the bawdy old landlady-and-lodger jokes: Vincent’s “I love you, I love your age, I love your unhappiness” shakes you with unanswerable recognitionin that small room, a theatrical seriousness in depth rarely found in any other art form. . And when young Kales reappears two years on with his new nonconcormist fervour to make preaching his art, Cusack’s expression of grieved exasperation in every limb shakes your heart out, barely needing her sudden rage. . Magnificent.
Orangetreetheatre.co.uk to 18 April
Rating 5
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