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Thursday 4 December 2008

The big sleep

Small Change
Donmar

War and Peace, I and II
Hampstead

I was amazed how the stage brings out dozens of fresh insights. I was aware that old Nikolai Bolkonsky was a magnanimous soul converted to tyranny by old age but I hadn’t conceived the comic possibilities of his character discovered by Jeffery Kissoon. The domestic scenes between him and Katie Wimpenny’s pious Maria are gently appalling and gently hilarious. Vinette Robinson catches the warmth and decency behind the simpering flirtatiousness of Mlle Bourrienne. Prince Andrei’s self-conscious magnificence, his essential priggishness, are brought out superbly in David Sturzaker’s proud, strutting version of the philosophising soldier. Separated from his giggling wife by military duty he suddenly realises how much he loves his family. ‘Even more, now that they’re far away.’ That got a big laugh. And it was laughter at, not with. One sensed a character not so much determinedly heroic as determined to leave the world with a portrait of heroism.

The show isn’t seamlessly perfect. There are unTolstoyan gestures and a few idiocies. Handkerchiefs are flourished too showily, like lassoes at a rodeo. And whenever some eager swain plights his troth he invariably hoiks his beloved on to his chest and staggers a few perilous paces around the stage like a comedy prisoner trying to bundle his cell-mate over the wall. The ballroom dances feature couples kangaroo-ing inwards and outwards and brandishing unsheathed bits of cutlery at each other. Pretty strange. And Richard Attlee’s broody Bonaparte (complete with Clouseau accent) haunts the stage too assiduously as if he were at the heart of the novel when Tolstoy specifically argues, well beyond the point of absurdity, that Napoleon had no practical influence over the wars that bear his name.

Finest of all is Barnaby Kay’s shambling, loveable Pierre, a crouching befuddled sojourner after truth, full of whims and doubts and inspired infatuations, a saint in the making. Kay’s performance lingered with me days after I’d seen the two parts of this show and at odd moments my subconscious kept jogging my elbow, ‘Remind me again, who was that amazing character I met a few nights back?’ I’d quite forgotten, in other words, that I’d been at the theatre. That’s the ultimate goal.

More articles from: Lloyd Evans | this section

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