There aren’t many theatre companies that instil a confidence
in their audience that everything you see them do is going to be good but every
time I see a Sport for Jove show that’s exactly how I feel. The only
trepidation I have heading out to their shows is whether I have enough petrol
in the car to make it all the way to Bella Vista Farm, whether it will rain and
wet my fabulous hair, that I will be attacked by a swarm of wasps or succumb to
lactose intolerance from all the cheese I foolishly ate during the picnic dinner.
Never, ever have I felt any concern over the quality of the work produced by
Damien Ryan and his Sport for Jove team because they know how to do theatre,
indoors and out, collaboratively and artistically, traditionally and
contemporary and always with integrity.
There’s a tremendous lot of talent in play in each show and
it feels like ego is checked at the door in favour of delivering the vision of
the first artist, the writer and combining it with the vision of Ryan and the collective.
No tricks, unless they serve the style and ideas; no big name stars carrying a
show but an ensemble with experience, skill and commitment and really good
material delivered by a top notch artistic team.
Sport for Jove care about their audience and it’s obvious
that by promising and delivering an experience that its punters find clever,
creative and cathartic that the rest of the industry and the
general public have nothing but respect and anticipation for each show produced.
‘Cyrano de Bergerac’ was no exception to this rule. Director
Damien Ryan even enlisted the assistance of the team to help inspire him to
adapt the text and he has crafted a version absolutely loyal to the original
but with such a modern and playful edge that his cast own it, led
by Yalin Ozucelik as Cyrano. But taking the adage, ‘no small roles, only small
actors’ whenever anyone in the ensemble was on stage, they were absolutely present, in role and
alive for the moment. There is a beauty of readiness from each actor that helps
suspend our disbelief as audience, even in the most exceptional of
circumstances. For instance, we’ve just entered the barn to watch the starving soldiers
fight off their enemy somewhere in the distance and yet I’m there with them.
Even the moon got in on the action and when it was called for in dialogue, it
politely cooperated and hit its mark, on cue, emerging from the clouds. I mean when a company
can control nature, you had better sit up and watch.
There were a couple of moments I felt an edit might have
been nice- all to do with Cyrano’s dialogue (and Ozucelik has more words to
pump out at lightning speed than seems humanly possible). The lazzi where Cyrano mocks his own nose just stretched the elastic
too far and his death scene had a touch of the Pyramus and Thisbe but that’s
also a problem in the cocktail of the epic, romance, melodrama and realism that
anyone would find hard to master.
But this is a minor criticism in what is an excellent production.
Kudos to Ozucelik, to Lizzie Schebesta’s feisty portrayal of Roxane and Scott
Sheridan’s handsome, cheeky but intellectually paralysed Christian de
Neuvilette. I could easily list every cast member and the fine performances
from each and how Ryan manages to use audience in the gentlest of ways to
include without intimidating, how Barry French has used this gorgeous setting
of the Bella Vista Farm to create the world of the stage, of homesteads, nunneries,
battlefields and bakeries and how Anna Gardiner has provided a masculine European
period design and how impressed I was with Toby Knyvett’s lighting. Every
player wins a prize and the audience win the biggest prize of all and that is
the privilege of seeing great theatre.
So head to Sport for Jove with the confidence that you are
witnessing a troupe who know how to produce good theatre and that’s exactly
what you’re going to get.
No comments:
Post a Comment