BACH & SONS
London’s Bridge Theatre until September 11. Tickets: email boxoffice@bridge theatre.co.uk or call 0333 320 0051
Playwright Nina Raine portrays Johann Sebastian Bach as a curmudgeonly genius who bullied his sons Carl and Wilhelm while composing divinely inspired music of mathematical complexity.
While the theory appears to be historically accurate, it is barely evident in Nicholas Hytner’s underwhelming production. Rather than the raging, priapic bull suggested by the script, Simon Russell Beale’s Bach comes over as an irritable teddy bear in search of lost honey. Too much exposition and too little character development means that Samuel Blenkin’s conformist Carl has to go from muted jealousy to blistering anger in 0.2 seconds while his maverick brother Wilhelm (Douggie McMeekin) is a louche drunk reduced to spouting epigrammatic cliches.
The most impressive performance comes from Pravessh Rana (in his first professional stage role) as Frederick The Great who exudes an airy privilege that barely conceals the silky predator beneath. The scene in which he attempts to seduce Carl over the new “fortepiano” is the best in a play punctuated by music but devoid of dramatic conflict. Raine’s attempt to echo Bach’s multitiered musical structure with multiple voices of dramatic dialogue and capture a complex family life that included 20 children, half of whom died young, is too effortful for comfort.