Lively Lucian Freud portrait leaps right off the canvas
nEVER mind the script. The great thing about this play, looking at the notorious, irascible, philandering painter Lucian Freud, is Henry Goodman’s performance.
Alan Franks’s play is serviceable enough, offering dinner party banter. But Goodman turns it into art, creating a seething portrait of the enigmatic artist.
Franks has Freud tell us how he painted the Queen, and was fascinated by the strain in her face. He gives us titbits on the gambling debt of £1.4 million, which the artist racked up when not busy shooting rats for his hawk. We hear how he paraded round Soho with Greta Garbo. And sired 14 (or more!) children. There are memories of his grandfather, the psychoanalyst Sigmund.
But it’s Goodman who brings the sometimes charming, always volatile and egocentric Jewish emigre to life. He nails his man by studying his appearance. Tilted head. Furrowed brow. Burrowing eyes. Brush clutched in left hand like a tiny javelin. Freud hobnobbed with the most famous fashionistas of his day, including Kate Moss and Jerry Hall, but was happy to slop around in his own hobo couture.
Tom Attenborough’s fine production captures all this in its charisma and contrivance.
And Carla Goodman’s set is a forensic reconstruction of Freud’s paint-spattered studio. All that’s missing is the smell of oil and turps.
If you’re hoping for some of his grandfather’s psychology, you’ll be disappointed. The pleasure here is being fixed by Goodman’s glare for 100 minutes and imagining yourself sitting for the truculent old rogue he brings to life so convincingly.
QUENTIN LETTS IS AWAY