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Sexual side of Renaissance makes striking body
of work
THE GIANT
HAMPSTEAD THEATRE
Howard Loxton
ANTHONY Sher’s new play about Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo weaves an intriguing fiction around the two Renaissance artists and the commissioning of the statue of David.
Picking up on a suggestion that work in the marble quarries at Carrara would produce a physique like that of the statue, Sher has introduced a young man from Carrara who models for David and becomes the object of both men’s affections. As an old man this Vito presents the story of his younger self, which begins in 1501, only three years after the burning of reformer Savonarola, when
Niccolò Machiavelli was gaining influence in Florence.
It is a fascinating idea that allows Sher to consider attitudes to art – Vito doesn’t see what it is for and city officials see it as a political propaganda tool – and to explore the conflict between the Dionysian and Apollonian sides of the two artists.
For both there is a struggle between the sensual and the cerebral, especially in relation to their sexuality. Both are presented as homosexual, but celibate. Leonardo, charged with male sodomy in his youth, acknowledges his feelings but tries to channel them into his work; Michelangelo subscribes to the religious rigours of Savonarola’s teaching and attempts to deny the longings he feels.
Director Greg Doran and designer William Dudley have solved the problems of staging the creation of a work of art with skill and great effect, and as the huge statue emerges from the stone Il Gigante, the struggle each man faces is revealed. Set against strong performances of flamboyant authority in Philip Voss’s Galfoniere Soderini, Mark Meadows and Barry McCarthy’s petty officials and Simon Trinder’s evilly camp Salai, Leonardo’s fixer, the two artists at first seem to lack charisma but, as the play develops, Roger Allam’s Leonardo gains in quiet stature and John Light’s Michelangelo reveals his inner passion, especially when, half-naked and bedaubed with marble dust, we see his need to regain inspiration.
Sexuality pervades this piece, but there is nothing prurient about it.
Although young Vito (a striking professional debut from Stephen Hagan) has clearly been cast for his physique as well as his acting skills, his youthful body is seen as an object of beauty not of lust. In a very moving scene, with the gentle curve of Hagan’s back presented to the audience both artists marvel at “the accident of beauty”.
Until December 1 |
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