“At points it sounds more like he is reading a menu than philosophising on love and religion”
From the Indian Ocean, to Hong Kong, to China, ‘Break of Noon’ follows the interweaving lives of four people, underscored by the murmurings of rebellion and decolonisation. Ysé is unhappily married to an entrepreneurial chancer who chases money across the globe. On one of their voyages she meets Amalric, an ex lover of years before, who pushes her towards the arms of Meza, who must choose between his faith in God and this strange new love for Ysé. Autobiographical to some extent, Paul Claudel wrote the play in 1905 but its resurrection is unfortunately a resounding failure.
Every element of the play is weak. The design is weak, getting progressively more lacklustre as the acts go on, and the costumes lack any attention to detail. The direction has the cast standing predominantly still, proclaiming monologue after monologue to each other, crowded statically in corners of the stage, unnatural and uncomfortable to watch.
Whilst some of the language of love is truly beautiful, every speech is so long, so dragged on that it takes an incredible effort to stay engaged with what is being said. The speeches drag on and one metaphor clouds another until the beauty of the words is lost in their mass. It is unclear why the decision to resurrect this play has been made, and it feels overblown, declamatory and clunky, and climatic moments become laughable.
Matt Lim struggles desperately in the central role of Meza. He improves marginally in the final act, but is otherwise bland and uncharacterised. At points it sounds more like he is reading a menu than philosophising on love and religion. There is no connection or chemistry between Meza and Ysé, and this irresistible, all consuming love is something we hear about a lot but do not see onstage. He is inappropriately cast, certainly considerably younger than the role requires, making him incredibly difficult to believe. The other three are stronger, and do their best with a combination of rigid script and direction. Whilst his part is the smallest, David Durham as De Ciz is strong, committed and convincing, and Connor Williams as Amalric is equally persuasive. Elizabeth Boag’s Ysé is fluent, warm and playful, a woman struggling to survive in a world where her free will is not guaranteed, and she must be disarmingly reliant on the men around her for her safety.
The energy and commitment of these three is commendable, and all that drives the play onwards, in an otherwise unsuccessful resurrection of Claudel’s ‘Break of Noon’.
“Occasional ripples stir up the action but the whole staging needs a good shake up”
Commissioned as part of the Finborough’s ‘Celebrating British Music Theatre’ series, “The Biograph Girl” is playing on the London stage for the first time since its 1980 premiere. With book and lyrics by Warner Brown and music by David Heneker (the composer of “Half A Sixpence”) it is a celebration of Hollywood’s glorious era of silent film, charting the fifteen years during which the industry transformed itself from its disreputable, ‘fleapit’ beginnings through to the birth of the first talking pictures and its glamorous multi-million dollar prime. In 1912, no self-respecting actor would appear in the “flickers”, as they were referred to, but by 1927, those same artistes, with the help of trail blazing moguls, laid the foundations of the movie business and launched the Hollywood star system.
The show is a nostalgic reminiscence of the silent movies, a tale of the heartbreaks and triumphs of the key players, concentrating on the flawed genius of director David Wark Griffith, along with Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish, both of them great silent film stars. Mary Pickford was known as ‘The Biograph Girl’ – after the studio – though this telling of the story fails to justify her having the titular role. This is very much Griffith’s story, played with a cool assurance by Jonathan Leinmuller. Sophie Linder-Lee’s Pickford, while emulating the original character, replaces her outward innocence with petulance which distances her from the audience’s sympathy. Instead Emily Langham quietly pulls focus with her sensitive portrayal of Lillian Gish – the ‘First Lady of American Cinema’.
The intimate space of the Finborough captures the ad hoc feel of early cinema where everything was done on a shoestring and sets were often cramped and improvised, and in this way the piece certainly lends itself to the confined dimensions of the theatre. The almost total lack of set however, whether a deliberate concept or one dictated by budget, strips the play of any sense of location. Likewise, Holly Hughes’ choreography abandons any perception of the period.
What does capture the moments of nostalgia and hold our attention is Warner Brown’s book and David Heneker’s music. The tunes are sophisticated yet still memorable. One particular highlight is Joshua C. Jackson’s heartfelt rendition of ‘Rivers of Blood’, a politically charged number that was cut from the original production. The cast deliver the ensemble numbers with a collective poise that emphasises Heneker’s skills as a composer, while Musical Director Harry Haden-Brown calmly navigates them through the score. Sometimes too calmly.
And there lies the problem with this production: there is no turbulence. Occasional ripples stir up the action but the whole staging needs a good shake up. Director Jenny Eastop has missed a whole bag of tricks and has merely delivered a monochrome product that should be fizzing with flashes of light and shade. It is a gift of a story, and a much more innovative staging is needed to do justice to this hugely talented cast too. The subject matter (and Heneker’s music) is too important. In his heyday, poetic beauty was something David Wark Griffith most wanted from the screen. He felt that the motion picture industry was losing sight of that, declaring later in his life: “We have taken beauty and exchanged it for stilted voices”. Eastop should take note.
