Autumn Sonata
By Ingmar Bergman
Adapted and directed by Dumle Kogbara
Act Provocateur Int
Lion & Unicorn Theatre
It’s All About
Me
With daring, originality and
optimism, adaptor/director Dumle Kogbara brings to the tiny Lion and Unicorn
Theatre his version of the great Swedish writer/director, Ingmar Bergman’s
deeply personal and revered work. Autumn
Sonata was Bergman’s chamber cinema at its exquisite peak.
The original story is telescoped
here into a collection of naked exchanges, some verbal, some written, all
painful, in which the intensely personal drama of the troubled relationship
between a self obsessed concert pianist mother, played by Annie Labura, and her
emotionally starved daughter, Eva, played Faye Billing, is finally faced head
on. It had to happen, it seems. The beautifully autumnal Chopin and Beethoven
music, such an intrinsic part of the characters’ lives, plays its part in the
story and in the drama.
Miss Billings brings to Eva a
sense of intense melancholy and of a wasted life which invokes a special mood
of vulnerability in her, and makes possible the awkward revelations between her
and the simmering, repressed Charlotte of Miss Labura. The only thing the two
women share is the bottle which loosens their tongues, and it is an irony that
until then their words seemed more for their own benefit than the other’s. But
that, after all, is what is at the heart of their struggle.
The other characters in the story
are either heard in a disembodied narration by Albert Clack (Eva’s husband) or
simply not included, except by reference, but in this play about a mother’s
visit from hell, there is plenty to keep one entertained.
Scheduled to be part of a double bill with Celebration Concerto, Kogbara’s own writer/director debut, an actor’s illness meant that this half of the evening’s fare will be available from next week.
Saul Reichlin
RemoetGoat
The Review - THEATRE by SARAH PEACEY
Published:
AUTUMN SONATA
Lion and Unicorn Theatre
ADAPTED from the 1978 Ingmar Bergman film of the same name, Autumn
Sonata is an intense portrayal of a mother-daughter relationship, running as
part of a double bill with Celebration Concerto, a play by Dumle Kogbara.
Annie Labura is excellent as Charlotte, the glamorous mother who has not seen
her daughter for the past seven years while she has been successfully touring
as a concert pianist.
Faye Billing is moving as Eva, the dowdy and neglected daughter, and has a
particularly nice line in bitter anger.
Initially excited and falling into her childhood pattern of eagerness to please
her mother, Eva’s mood quickly descends into an outpouring of long-suppressed
resentment concerning her upbringing.
There ensues a psychological battle where both reveal much about their feelings
towards each other and their lives in general.
Although fairly bleak, apart from a final note of optimism at the end, this is
an absorbing and insightful look at the way in which parents and children
relate to each other.
Until January 20
020 7485 9897