Heavenly voice that brings a devastating finale
FARINELLI AND THE KING Duke of York theatre ★★★★✩
MARK Rylance may be the big acting name in Farinelli and the King but the real star – whose talent makes you tingle – is countertenor Iestyn Davies, with help from Georg Frideric Handel.
Mr Davies will be sharing duties during this production with two other countertenors. At last night’s opening it was his extraordinary singing that stole the show. Mr Rylance may be relaxed about being upstaged by such artistry.
After all, his wife Claire van Kampen wrote this clever new candlelit play.
Mr Davies sings (but does not act – that is done by Sam Crane) the role of castrato Carlo Broschi. He was better known as Farinelli, 18th century opera’s greatest male diva.
King Philip V of Spain is in steep decline with mental illness. The first we see of him, he is fishing in his goldfish bowl. Philip’s worried queen (Melody Grove) travels to London to lure heavenly-voiced Farinelli to Madrid.
As soon as Philip (Mr Rylance) hears Farinelli’s falsetto, the madness lifts and the Spanish court’s manoeuvres towards enforced abdication are thwarted (Edward Peel on good form, if a ringer for Russ Abbott, as the chief courtier).
Philip, still frail, moves himself, Queen Isabella and Farinelli to a cottage in a forest glade where they can commune with nature and strain for sounds of the celestial stars. Farinelli, though shorn of his manly knackers, falls for Isabella and she for him; yet they suppress their love out of their regard for the king.
It is all rather understated and sad and ends, devastatingly, superbly, in one of the scenes of the season, with Mr Davies singing Handel’s Lascia Ch’io Pianga. The audience, some seated around and above in a theatre that reconfigured to create a Georgian ambience, was rapt.
That piece of Handel is equalled only, perhaps, by Dido’s Lament by Purcell. All the sadness of the tale comes home but so does the play’s noble theme that art eclipses worldly power.
This show is not innocent of slightly precious moments. One or two lighter touches may also evoke TV’s Blackadder. But that finale? Fantastico Farinelli.