FringeReview UK 2024
London Tide
National Theatre, London
Genre: Adaptation, Classical and Shakespeare, Live Music, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Theatre
Venue: National Theatre, Lyttelton
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
“This is a story about London,/and of death, and resurrection.” It’s no accident the one novelist who triumphantly escapes deadly-theatre adaptations was the first dramatist of himself: acting in his own theatrical melodramas.
Now, following the recent tradition started by the RSC with Nicholas Nickleby, Ben Power renders Dickens’ last completed novel from 1865, Our Mutual Friend into London Tide. With music and lyrics by P. J. Harvey (and Power himself) it opens at the National’s Lyttelton directed by Ian Rickson till June 22nd.
Adaptor Pen Power, Director Ian Rickson, Set and Costume designer Bunny Christie, Lighting Designer Jack Knowles, Composer PJ Harvey, Music Director Ian Ross, Co-Sound Designers Tingying Dong and Christopher Shutt, Movement Director Anna Morrissey, Video Designer Hayley Egan, Fight Director Terry King
Casting Director Bryony Jarvis-Taylor, Voice and Dialect Coach Simon Money, Associate Set Designer Verity Sadler, Staff Director Yasmin Hafesji.
Till June 22nd
Review
“This is a story about London,/and of death, and resurrection.” It’s no accident the one novelist who triumphantly escapes deadly-theatre adaptations was the first dramatist of himself: acting in his own theatrical melodramas.
Now, following the recent tradition started by the RSC with Nicholas Nickleby, Ben Power renders Dickens’ last completed novel from 1865, Our Mutual Friend into London Tide. With music and lyrics by P. J. Harvey (and Power himself) it opens at the National’s Lyttelton directed by Ian Rickson till June 22nd.
In one sense Dickens might have recognised it. It’s not a musical but 13 haunting songs, specially composed by Harvey for others – a thrilling departure for her – revisit the tradition of melodrama. It also raises the haunted atmosphere like the high tide of the Thames running just outside, both destroyer and baptismal redeemer. In another way – uniquely for Dickens – the novelist’s theatrical energy is subdued.
Atmosphere then but also the flatline energy of the Thames: implacable, a rippling grey, like Bunny Christie’s starkly effective set: nothing but bare metal and Jack Knowles’ remarkable descending and ascending lighting mimicking the tides; planks walked on and off to signify boats, bodies dropping off downstage to splashes – Tingying Dong’s and Christopher Shutt’s moody sonics wrapping it all.
Power miraculously compresses this huge work, first by lopping off Mr Venus and other subplots, parking the nouveau-riche political wannabe Veneerings offstage; laughed at. Secondly he reveals the great secret at the end of Act One (Powers subdivides into eight chapters, Knowles surtitling places like Limehouse and headings) to provide one dramatic finish.
And this eases Power in his final ‘Chapter Eight’ to morph the finale to a coming-together, altering some ends. In some ways counter-intuitively he sentimentalizes. There’s a reconciliation that never happens, comfortable ends to a couple more; and by contrast more modern ambiguity for the two couples at the heart of this pared-down work. It’s not so drastic as to reverse Dickens’ intentions, but acknowledges unfinished growth.
Above all women are given far more agency, which is infinitely more satisfying and improves the narrative. Given the earlier reveal, the Boffins’ role in the ‘friend’ of Dickens’ title is muted to allow a direct admission between him and the woman he’s bound to, and a more idealistic gesture than Dickens might recognise. Though the pivotal (and frankly sexist) ‘test’ of love is also banished.
The cast sing, generally with a raw power and haunting truth that does add to the ominous storm-lit days and occasional reflections Knowles provides (surely more could be asked from this designer who has numinous and edge in his lighting bones).
Lizzie Hexam (Ami Tredrea) is given a power to tell her own story, sometimes ballad-like from the start. Bella Maclean’s Bella Wilfer sings with tremendous agency and brings heart to a ‘spoilt’ young woman who here finds her own voice, doubts and pushes against manipulation.
Tom Mothersdale’s memorable John Rokesmith owns in fourth-wall admissions his own composition of shadows, and haunts his name more than in the novel. It’s a transformation giving him too more humanity. Eugene Wrayburn (Jamael Westman loses his raffish edge and from the start is allowed more social conscience, which makes his immersion and redemption less morally powerful, but is allowed more affect and humility in his pursuit of Lizzie.
Brandon Grace brings a chipper judgemental edge to the ungrateful Charley Hexam who’s here allowed a happier redemptive quality Dickens refuses him. The darkly brooding Bradley Headstone comes across as more pathetic than disturbed in Power’s and Scott Karim’s hands: his lumbering obsession with Lizzie realised, though sense of intellectual inferiority to both her and Charley glossed over. Peter Wight animates Noddy Boffin but is given far less to do with him.
By contrast Ellie-May Sheridan – making a striking stage debut – and Power give Jenny Wren a new reach and wit with her dolls’ conversations and sardonic knowingness, using theatrical terms for Wrayburn like “her’es your leading man”. It’s a journey you feel is fitting. Jake Wood’s Gaffer Hexam who perishes early snarls his way back on stage in memory: but he’s also given flickers of grief and humanity over losing his son to education.
Beth Alsbury sparkles as shrewd Lavinia Wilfer, Joe Armstrong’s Roger Riderhood in fact comes across as more human than Dickens depicts him: but thuggish when needed. Crystal Condie’s Miss Potterson registers despair at trying to help Lizzie, almost a narrative in itself here, as does Laura Cubitt as Nancy.
Mary Wilfer (Penny Layden) is all resignation, Stephen Kennedy’s Reg Wilfer is as softly wise as any doting father, Joshua Lacey’s Inspector Bucket is trimmer and more alert, Jonathan Dryden Taylor’s Mr Cleaver a living rag of pathos. And you feel Mortimer Lightwood (Rufus Wright) is saint-like in his frustration, pleading with Wrayburn as his senior partner
The active ensemble includes Miya James, John Vernon, Liam Prince-Donnelly, Eric Mok, Georgia Silver.
The choric power of the whole ensemble is absolutely hypnotic, Harvey’s new songs truly memorable. Dialogue has occasionally been updated, “Get a grip” says Miss Potterson.
Anna Morrissey’s movement effects what such storytelling relies on: physical theatre. Slow ballets of nightmare and desire swirl across the Lyttleton’s span: the dead dredge themselves, Bella engages in a weird pas de trois with her suitors (psychology makes little sense unless she flinches at one of them); society whisks itself away, the ensemble sings powerfully downstage.
Shout out too for the onstage musicians led by Music Director Ian Ross on piano and guitar, with Alex Lupo on drumkit and Sarah Anderson on keyboards. They add to the sullen, acrid poetry of Power’s, Harvey’s and Rickson’s vision.
Strong on this, the craziness and fizzing dramatic inventiveness that’s Dickens’ theatrical DNA has been tamed, not always for the best, and surely some contrary mode of storytelling might push against the remorseless pluck and knock of the production’s tides. But it compels utterly, and nothing in its three hours 15 seems superfluous.
