Play treads an unconvincing path
Red Dust Road
Lyceum Theatre
It’s unusual to see an Edinburgh International Festival show – produced, in this case, by the National Theatre of Scotland and HOME Manchester – take such a profound wrong turning in its very inception that even the best efforts of a dedicated cast cannot entirely save it. Something like that has happened, though, with Red Dust Road, the new stage version of Scottish poet Jackie Kay’s powerful memoir about her search for her birth parents, and particularly for her Nigerian father.
The problem is that Kay’s book has a winding, weaving poetic structure, held together by her distinctive authorial voice, that works beautifully on the page, but is more problematic on stage; particularly since playwright Tanika Gupta and director Dawn Walton have made a decision to retain that complex structure, yet not to use a strong narrator’s voice to drive the drama.
The result is a pageant of scenes – some powerful and engaging, some flat-footed, and some weirdly repetitive – that never really shape up into a play. At the centre of the story stand Jackie’s wonderful adoptive parents, Glasgow communists John and Helen Kay, played with strength and affection by Lewis Howden and Elaine C Smith; and every time they appear – singing songs, telling stories, and demonstrating the odd Scottish country dance – the theatrical energy of the show leaps and surges for a while, carrying Sasha Frost’s appealing but slightly underpowered Jackie with it. Seroca David is also vivid and life-enhancing as the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who persuades Jackie to ignore the born-again Christian hangups of her birth father, and make contact with the rest of her Nigerian family.
Elsewhere, though – and despite a gorgeous set design by Simon Kenny, featuring a huge gilt frame twining into a deep tree-root – this potentially fascinating story of race, identity and the legacy of colonialism just wanders the stage as if in search of a central narrative, or a conflict to be resolved; in what often seems like a faint theatrical
Asmik Grigorian as Tatyana with Günter Papendell as the eponymous Eugene Onegin
it worked well for most of the scenes, especially those set in the country with Komische Oper Berlin’s glorious sounding chorus, a temporary structure for the ball scene didn’t quite cut it.
But director Barrie Kosky used this outdoor space, with its backdrop of large trees to give us a slightly different perspective on the action and some striking tableaux. For instance after her birthday party, Tatyana sits holding her cake amidst a sea of empty chairs as the stage spins around. The dual between Onegin and Lensky takes place off stage with just the jackets of the two men lying on the grass as Tatyana arrives to hear the fatal shot. And in the finale as the rain soaks Onegin and Tatyana, her blood red dress burns like flame against the greenery.
In the pit, Ainārs Rubiķis and the orchestra matched the emotional journey of the characters with their sumptuous account of Tchaikovsky’s lyrical score and its catchy folk song melodies. shadow of a fine book that’s several scenes too long.
A concert performance that can lift Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice out of the commonplace and release the passions and tensions locked within its no-nonsense score can often be more helpful to understanding its emotional struggle than even the most glamorous full-blown stage production.
Even more helpful, as in this thoughtfully contained concert presentation by The English Concert, under conductor Bernard Labadie, is to hear it so touchingly played, so perfectly proportioned, by a distinguished period instrument band. When the 18th century-style oboe burst into song in the pastoral scene, it was like an ecstatic sunburst compared to the more focussed modern equivalent.
But it was the entire picture, created effortlessly by Labadie, that was so impressive here. His moulding of the textures was insightful, the velveteen softness of the cornets and sackbuts never a threat to the soft-spoken strings, the interplay of the
Bach Keyboard 2
St Cecilia’s Hall
It’s always good to start with a joke. No sooner had harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani and his supporting Dunedin Consort launched into the romping first 8 bars of Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in D minor, when they stopped abruptly. “That’s all Bach gave us”, he announced, further explaining he had arranged his own extended reconstruction, which we were now about to witness.
The “new” material, he added, came from a 1726 cantata bearing the same theme, so the task was to do “what Bach would have done” and “turn it into a harpsichord concerto”. The result was largely convincing, strangely scored (by Bach) for supporting oboe, strings and continuo, but distinctive in this performance for the deliciously ripe oboe playing of Jasu Moisio.
Emerging in this series is a conviviality evident in both the chatty presentation and raw spontaneity in performance. I loved how Esfahani’s flamboyance loaded his Toccata in D minor solo spot with super-charged unpredictability, not so much the throwaway ending that bore careless after-twangs from the Kirckman harpsichord.
There’s plenty of stylish zeal in the F major Concerto (actually Brandenburg 4 recast), its texture softened by the agile duo, Robert Ehrlich and Ian Wilson.