![]() ![]() The play has only a short run in Hammersmith, but is surely destined for the West End.Īt the centre of this musical show are two disappearing acts. ![]() Mr Basden's script is chock-full of visual gags and clever wordplay and Daniel Raggett's production moves apace to make for thrilling entertainment. Leading a talented cast, Mr Rigby gives a bravura performance: playfully breaking the fourth wall, he effortlessly brings the audience along with him as he reshapes the officers' words, and runs rings around investigative journalist Fi Phelan (Ruby Thomas), sent to cover the death. Tom Basden's script is chock-full of visual gags and clever wordplay and Daniel Raggett's production moves apace to make for thrilling entertainmentīut as he digs into their clearly false record of the incident, The Maniac encourages them to add layer upon layer of deceit, ending in the farcical notion it was the officers' kind treatment of the anarchist - including having a sing-song with him, hilariously staged - that moved him to jump out of the window. He disguises himself as the justice and starts to interrogate the police, including dense Detective Daisy (Jordan Metcalfe), smug Superintendent Curry (Tony Gardner) and put-upon Constable Joseph (Shane David-Joseph). In Mr Basden's updated version, The Maniac (Daniel Rigby) - a fantasist-cum-con artist suffering from, he says, 'histrionic mania' - is being questioned by Inspector Burton (Howard Ward) over his latest impersonation when he learns that a suspicious death in the police station is going to be investigated by a judge. References to the Met's shortcomings feature prominently in Tom Basden's brilliant adaptation of Dario Fo and Franca Rame's political farce, based on real-life events when an anarchist 'fell' from a window while being questioned by Milan police in 1969. WHAT exquisite timing for this exploration of heavy-handed policing, which has its London run (after originating at Sheffield Theatres) just as the capital's police force is threatened with being broken up after a long series of scandals. Nor is there much Italian about the very Anglo-Saxon rock score, which could indeed be from the opera Berlusconi himself is writing, in one of the show's unfunny running jokes. The chaotic tone of Ricky Simmonds and Simon Vaughan's show, which is nigh on three hours long, is poorly judged, inviting us to laugh at the clownish ways of the fraudster famed for throwing 'bunga bunga' sex parties at his villa, but also claiming to lament the fate of the women whose lives he poisoned. So too, I fear, does this witless and generic new bio-musical, Berlusconi, opening Southwark Playhouse's new third venue. What's missing from this impeccably PC, orderly and odourless production is a sense of chaos.įor that we must look to Shakespeare's grammar, expurgated throughout and reaching its nadir in the bathos of Mark Antony's verdict on Brutus: 'She is an honourable man.'Īs many women know to their cost, Silvio Berlusconi needs to be handled with care. Inscrutably allied to this is the use of oil instead of fake blood, and an atomic clock counting down time.Īnd there is arresting music from Jasmin Kent Rodgman, which combines primal wails, throbbing drums and cacophonous brass. Rosanna Vize's staging looks cool, with a huge rotating cube housing an olive tree and allowing arty projections that also crowbar in an obscure environmental message. ![]() It might have helped if William Robinson, as their rival Mark Antony, was more of a nasty fascist instead of an equally sensitive millennial.Īnd, with the exception of Nadi Kemp-Sayfi's emotionally modulated Portia, over-emphatic diction all but destroys Shakespeare's nuances, ironies and moods. Today, alas, honour is an anachronism and ambition a moral positive - so we are left with an ideological vacuum, with little reason for the conspirators to risk their cosy utopia of diversity and inclusivity. Given that she tells us she loves Caesar (platonically), she is motivated to kill him only for the honour of terminating his ambition. Perhaps that's because she is enjoying a perfect life with her vibrant wife, Portia. Sadly, though, Teixeira remains stubbornly lovely and decisively vague. Like a rugby prop forward, she puts her shoulder to Shakespeare's oratorical verse to shove Thalissa Teixeira's long, languid Brutus into leading a conspiracy against Caesar. Rising to the challenge, Kelly Gough is a ferocious Cassius. It's as though a godlike Alan Sugar had set up a version of The Apprentice and given a team of factious young hopefuls the task of going forth to nail Caesar. What's missing from this impeccably PC, orderly and odourless production is a sense of chaos ![]()
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