The excavation of an epic narrative poem that is more than four centuries old is an exhilarating if dangerous prospect in the world of contemporary theatre, particularly when the poem is one written by Shakespeare (tread carefully now, I’m thinking with nervous uncertainty as I scan the theatre for the perfect seat from which to feast my eyes, for some of us harbour quite pernickety preferences to how we like our Shakespeare served). Furthermore, to propose to set it to music and sing and act some thousand lines that were written to be read is, well, either pure foolish or sheer genius. ‘And just a warning,’ O’Sullivan informs us during her casually spoken prologue and with one ominously raised eyebrow ‘there may be some singing.’
Director Elizabeth Freestone and designer Lily Arnold produce a setting that is striking in its asymmetrical beauty: a dark wooden floor that fractures at its ends towards the front of the stage, stacks of thick manila manuscript papers and six suspended canvases of sapphire blue and gold (one framing nothing but the darkness of backstage). The grand piano to the front left is almost veiled completely in the darkened sides of the stage but for one pinpointed light illuminating Murray’s score. Between a pair of pearly white slip-on shoes, representing the virtuous Lucrece, and the black scruffy lace-up boots of her squalid perpetrator Tarquin, O’Sullivan is centred barefoot in a long black coat buttoned all the way up to the neck with her hair pinned off her face. The piano enters with a waltz-like series of broken chords and just before she begins to sing, I wince a little with the anticipation of some kind of Shakespearian-styled court Cabaret with a button-by-button striptease just waiting to happen (Camille, as she is widely known, is after all recognised more for her popular Cabaret performances than for her Shakespeare). But what really happens on stage, both musically and theatrically, and much to my relief and utter enthralment, is nothing short of collaborative genius of the sheerest kind.
She begins as the narrator in the poem, combining rhythmically spoken word that seems to find a synonymously pertinent pitch with the accompanying piano and gradually evolves into song without us even realising it. O’Sullivan’s voice, loaded with inherent and unforced emotion with each line she sings, bears a slight rasp in its heavy timbre and possesses a refreshingly unpolished finish.
Song and speech are seamlessly juxtaposed in the telling of this poem about Lucrece, the wife of a Roman officer, Collatine, who boasts of her chastity to his comrade Tarquin, the son of the King. As night falls (attributable to the remarkable lighting by Vince Herbert), Tarquin appears from the darkness and makes towards the sleeping Lucrece’s chamber. With a simple square-within-a-square of light on the dark floor, the scene has cleverly transformed. As Tarquin slowly parts the curtain encasing Lucrece, a bar of yellow light is cast diagonally across the perimeters of layered shadow that represent the walls of her room and the bed within. With hooked shoulders and a weighty brow, O’Sullivan paces as Tarquin, on the brink of committing his crime at the foot of the bed, and achieves something that one can only imagine is close to impossible: she enters and articulates the mind of a man about to rape. There, the depraved Tarquin sings his ‘unfruitful prayer’ to the steady beat of minor chords pulsating from the piano, to which his foot begins to pound, his body sways and with the hand that was drumming in double-time on his callous heart he removes his heavy floor-length coat. But what is most terrifying about this sinister scene is Shakespeare’s provocative words and how Tarquin manages to justify to himself (and oh so poetically) the appalling actions he is about to take. In a tightly directed transformation, O’Sullivan, now as Lucrece in her white cotton nightdress and loosened hair, is at once the rapist and his victim in a sprawl on the stage bathed in light. Murray accompanies the cries of her terror and pain on the piano by grating a plectrum across the instrument’s metal strings inside the lid; an effective and macabre way of underscoring the incident.
In the aftermath, we hear Lucrece speak and sing for the first time, and it is here that O’Sullivan’s true ability for transformation is exhibited. Her face, body and voice, it seems, has changed completely and her playing of this distraught woman ‘wrapped and confounded in a thousand fears’ is utterly heartbreaking. As Lucrece begins to consider suicide as her only salvation, the tragedy deepens, but without an ounce of melodramatic excess (we are spared the red petals featured in the programme’s photograph of the final scene). Shakespeare’s words, at this point in particular, are rightly let speak for themselves. There is a quiet stillness about the stage with O’Sullivan adopting a still and reflective poise to allow for the words of the poem to ring true. We learn, through the voice of the narrator, how she tragically takes her life and the sheer beauty and poeticism of this final scene is deeply affecting.
The controversial subjects in this poem are handled with utmost sensitivity by all involved in this exceptional production, and O’Sullivan has clearly demonstrated a new echelon of aptitude.
Star rating: ★★★★★