THEATRE REVIEW
Şi cu violoncelul ce facem? / What Shall We Do with the Cello
By Matei Vişniec
Directed by: Vasile Nedelcu '
'What Shall We Do With The Cello?' is one of many of the writings by Matei Vişniec to be banned by the Ceauşescu regime in Romania, causing the playwright and poet to seek asylum in Paris in 1987, where he still lives and writes. And one can see why- it is the most absurd and wonderful, dangerously surrealist metaphor depicting how a nation deals and/or attempts to deal with - brutal oppression.
I had the great privilege of seeing it last night in THE CAGE which is within the vaults of London’s Waterloo – an appropriate enough setting, since the rumbling of trains overhead- heard unexpectedly and randomly - were like the muffled, menacing, underground sound of tanks advancing, or bombing.
But the play is more about the nail-bombing destruction of the mind. How does one deal with an oppressor, a serial abuser?
The plot is simple enough – people are in a “waiting room”, waiting for a train or waiting for a storm to pass; there is amongst them, a cellist playing his instrument; he goes on and on –finally and politely the people in the waiting room ask him to stop playing, it is driving them crazy; until he stops the people in the waiting roomcan’t be at peace.
He doesn’t stop.
When they go crazy, it’s a serious business … but because this play is of the absurd and surreal - it is also very funny and very acrobatic - there is a lot of well-choregraphed slapstick. So, given that the play is about a brutal regime and with such terrible and shameful connotations for today – how is it that I leave the theatre uplifted? Well, that is the nature of art: it is always uplifting; optimistic, joyful, even.
As I leave the theatre, I leave a play without which my life would have remained all too normal.
The cellist was Nick Allen, the music’s composer, Iancu Dumitrescu; let me name the cast - Simona Armstrong, Mihai Arsene and Tudor Smoleanu, ensemble acting of the highest order; director,Vasile Nedelcu, choreographer Mălina Andrei.
The Vaults, Leake Street, Waterloo, SE1 7NN
Wednesday 8 – Sunday 12 February 2017, 7.15pm
Matinee on Sat 11 Feb, 4.45pm
General admission: £12
Review by Shaun Traynor
www.shauntraynor.co.uk
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Review
THE IMMORTALIST By Heathcote Williams
Pentameters Theatre Hampstead 28 Heath St NW3
Box Office 020 7435 3648
Sunday, April 30
Tonight, a mesmerising performance by Jack Moylett, brought Heathcote Williams’ brilliant two-hander, first produced (actually here at Pentameters) in 1977 bang up to date and tick-tocking its way into the 21st century. Except that the play’s theme is timelessness and its concept: clocks were invented to make people work, clocks were bad things; clocks were the problem, clock in, clock out .. without work, without capitalism, without time we could all live to be a thousand! Such is the tantalizing, philosophical, metaphysical prospect offered to us by a young-ishHeathcote Williams as he - with great erudition and wit - calls on all literary and intellectual sources available to him - earthly, ethereal and imagined - to convince us that it is in our power to defy death. What a good idea! Fanciful, clever, witty and in the end emotionally persuasive. Part of its persuasive force was to keep asking why we don’t put more resources into finding away to prolong - or even forever sustain - life; rather than keep on going to war. Go to see this play, be entertained by a great acting performance;live in hope, leave those pills behind.
SHAUN TRAYNOR www.shauntraynor.co.uk
Last May dates: Friday 5th & Saturday 6th at 8.00pm Sunday 7th at 5.00pm
Tickets: £13.00 / Concessions £10.00