A WILD DECEPTION
Solemnly, a great dark chime summons a ring of black-cloaked figures, pleading forgiveness, singing of disgrace, circling round a stack of peasant props – tables, stools, brooms, hayforks. The cloaks are flung off, garlands thrown, penitence turns to a wedding celebration. If you’re in a late-booked £34 stage stall, threateningly close, the sense of passionate village primitivisim is overwhelming.
It continues so for 95 tense minutes, with all the wild-sung passion that its creators Claude-Michel Schonnberg and Alain Boublil brought to Les Miserables. It is the story, supposedly true, of a young man married against his will to Bertrande, unable to consummate it and so blamed for bringing Satan’s curse of drought on the town. He runs away, is (we think) killed in battle – suddenly banners in the dim light and flying – but an army friend returns seven years on, claiming Martin Guerre’s identity and having children by Bertrande (it’s raining by now: beautiful choreography of relief and gratitude). But will the deceit endure, as ‘Martin’s status and property increase?
Some have found this half-forgotten, often-revised, now cleverly tightened musical both absurd and overwrought. But I – since this is my antepenultimate review on theatrecat – was more than ready to be overwrung.
I had nipped in out of sheer faith in Matthew Warchus , whose swansong as AD of the Old Vic this is, and my faith was well rewarded. The semi-staged, in-the-round lighting and Lizzie Gee’s fabulously primitive, emotional mass choreography evoking mob rule do some of the work, the ferocious music still more. Only occasionally does it fall into lovely lyricism , Fantine-style, with songs like Someday : Shane O”Riordan is passionately strong as the second Martin, Liv Andrusier deeply touching as Bertrande, the real victim in all this, treated as cursed for seven years and then suddenly a beloved wife and mother, provided she believes it’s him. Colin Ryan as the village simpleton carries a weird turnip-doll puppet, adding still more unease and cruel hope and confusion; the stern local priest and the judge who presides over a breathtaking trial scene complete a picture of community, melodrama, passion and desperate humanity hard to resist.
And very French. Somehow, after watching the double De Gaulle films and the riots across France on the news, quite a lot of my French convent early-childhood washed over me afresh, cowering happily in my stage-stall. This reaction may, compared to others’ more judicial verdicts, be extreme. But I loved every minute, and thank you Mr Warchus, again…]
Oldvic.com to oct 31
rating 5 mice , because mice too like an emotional hit.
