Camden New Journal - Theatre: War and Peace (Part I)

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The Review - THEATRE by HOWARD LOXTON
Published: 17 April 2008

Smoke and mirrors illuminate Tolstoy epic

WAR AND PEACE (PART I)
Hampstead Theatre

SHARED Experience’s production of Helen Edmundsen’s adaptation of Tolstoy’s epic story is presented in two parts, each about two and a half hours plus interval, which you can either see over two nights or sometimes on the same day.
That enables it to encompass much more of this vast novel than previous stage or cinema versions. You don’t get just the several love stories, the battles and the picture of early 19th-century Russia: you also get a taste of the political and religious ideas that are part of the texture of the book – and all presented in a way that makes it an engaging piece of theatre.
It starts in a gallery of the Hermitage where a tourist is looking at portraits of generals from the Napoleonic Wars – the set is all smokey mirrors and gilt picture frames, which is used later to great effect – where a gallery attendant quietly knitting provides a mysterious link between past and present.
When the story’s characters emerge in the gloom of the closing museum, a magic begins that directors Nancy Meckler and Polly Teale manage to sustain throughout. Lighting and music make an important contribution and the production has a powerful visual style that sometimes contrasts scenes that change rapidly from a St Petersburg soiree to a country estate, from a Moscow club to the battlefield.
This is a fine mixture of ideas and physical theatre. You don’t get naturalism: Pierre – who isn’t played to gain our sympathy – conducts conversations with a mirage of the Napoleon whom he admires, but you do get some living portrayals of character.
Jeffery Kissoon’s wonderfully blunt old Prince Bolkonsky, Geoffrey Beevers’s doting Count Rostov and hard-bitten General Kutuzov and Barnaby Kay’s Pierre are outstanding, if you can say that of performances so well integrated into the almost faultless playing of a hard-working ensemble company.
Try to see both parts. If you catch Part I
I’m sure you’ll want to see the rest, but if you can’t at least you can read the book to catch up on the story.
I’ve seen a couple of film versions of the book, several productions of Prokovief’s opera and an earlier stage version by Piscator – but none has given me so much of the essence of the original as this.

Until May 11
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