The Observer from London, Greater London, England • 68

Sunday 'I lebnutiy 99fc' ihc ObsurvLT Review 11 the Art if 1 --r- em MICHAEL COVENEY On of his Dram An -excellent play about Stanley Spencer and an overlong attempt at an old French classic letters (a treasure trove in theTate -archives) are cleverly stitched in -Patricia's breasts stand out like peeled cornice pears; all other painters, says Stanley, are mere decorators, ducks, or daft in the head -but the piece never feels like a ltommage. Deborah Findlay. sensual and touching as Hilda, and Chancellor herself (though her role is sustained in only one scene after the interval), see to that Great support, too, from Selina Cadell as Patricia's butch inamorata, Dorothy Hepworth. who quietly fumes while other bottoms burn, and who delivers a critical defence of Spencer's unique talent which Patricia has first exploited and then derided. Sher has acquired a convincing hairpiece, as well as the right spectacle frames, corduroy trousers and scuffed shoes.

His inimitable style of busy, penetrative character acting brings theartist alive while suggesting another sort of volcanic, alien energy, me anguish-behind Spencer mattranscendsGookham and the Bible and. invests him with a Blakean, visionary wildness. This "comic innocent dreams of sexual gratification, but is submerged in his art; it is the dreams diat count. The romantic daisy chain in Mar- eel Catne's wartime masterpiece of the French cinema, LesEnfants du Paradis, prompts Simon Callow, making his RSC debut as a director, to follow lohn Caird (and Trevor Nunn) on the trail of Nicholas Nick-lebyand Les Miserdbles. He arrives.

Sher arid Sher alike: Another uncanny transformation, this time into Stanley Spencer Photograph, by Neil Libber? Love is in the air and among the artists this week in two major openings, Les Enfants duParadis'ahd Stanley, powered by two Renaissance men of our theatre. foiTyomething friends and rivals Simon Callowand Antony Sher. Callow has made-Ms marie on film as a 'personality', actor and in print as a biographer of Charles Laughton and Orson Welles, while Sher neks offthe great classical roles in between writing novels, drawing and painting. Sher's oil and charcoal figures have always been lumpen and fleshy. hoveringsensuousK' between the styles of Beryl Cook and Lucian Freud: fas onstage impersonations often bear traces of his own drawing board.

In another trick of physical transformation, he now becomes the priapic mystic of Cookham, Stanley Spencer. Pam Gerris's excellent newplay, Sumte', provides him with the outline of the bumpkin, bohemian artist who" lives and breathes painting as convincingly as did Charles Laughton's Rembrandt or Kirk Douglasyvan Gogh. The Cottesloe istransformed by designer Tim Hadey irito a Spencer-" ian chapel of the Coqkham and Glasgow Resurrection scenes, the waBsheaing with torsos and limbs, and scenes of Biblical moment that characterise Spencer imaginative and suburban torment. Sher as Spencer lies prostrate, squinhingon top ofhis own erection, as he paints his wife Hilda's inner thighs. The beds into which Spencer climbs like a frisk-squirrel finally confineJjilda vfieiher nervous Is Stanley Spencer in the theatre anything like the real artist? William Feaver gives his verdict he silliest.mistake is to have Stanley saying that Trmfae Bacon suggested sending Hilda, his ex-wife, to see Dr Freud: Why concoct an just about, at the end of a long tomy- ne neyiyjcmgntea btamey mens of the genre as Bernadette, Cluldren of Eden (directed by John Caird) and.

Wliich Witch. The story of onas Gandide, a travelling state executioner in 1918 Mississipi, is based on a long-forgotten Stacy Xeach filmi There are more volts than Voljtaire about this Candide: he falls in love with one ofhis female customers, comes to no good and finds himself strapped to his own chair. Hoist on his own petard, you might say, or fried in his own pan. In such a week of romantic excess it is too easy to lose sight of the genuine merits of August Wilson's Two Trains Running, in which this wonderful American writer continues Ills twentieth-century saga of the black cornmunity in Pittsburgh. It is now 1969, anfme denizens of at ditier 'ewthfafbn rallyto commenfoe Randall's production is beautifully played by a cast including Ray Shell, Tony Armatrading and Jenny Jules.

In a reversal of the tructural dynamr ic in Stanley, theplay's texture grows and deepens, transforming what might have been a black Cheers into a rhythmic dramatic poem, vibrant with manners and of Eugene O'Neill at his pipe-dreaming, saloon bar best. Stanley RNTCoUesloe, London SE1 (01 71-928 2252); JLes Enfants du Paradis Barbican, London 71-638 889 The Fields of Ambrosia Aldun'ch, London WC2 (0171-379 3367): Two Trains Running Tricycle, London NW6 (01 71 -328 1 000) the poet assassin Lacenaire, give tremendousperformances unfazed by inevitable comparisons with Arletty and Marcel Herrand. Garance is the enigmatic beauty who has bewitched and enslaved mimetic titans of the nineteenth-century French theatre, trje sweet down Baptiste Debureau.ahd the heroic tragedian Frederick Lemaitre. Here, the inevitable comparisons with Jean-Louis Barrault and Pierre Brasseur are not particularly flattering- how could they be? to Rupert Graves and James miming of the former -notably in the explanation of the pickpocketing incident is not near-lyprecise enough, and the bombast of the latteiraujfiier anlKvhen Fredrick Splays Orneilo, yorfsenseifrat PtifMby'dlSaifow havebeen unabteto deeiderwhether to ridicule the actor or celebrate hin a fatal loss of nerve. On the credit side, the romantic scenes between Baptiste and.

Garance are beautifully done, the music of lohn White is exciting and atmospheric. Robin Don's rapidly whirling, scaffolded set may upset those of a nervous disposition, but it -does work well as a warren of back5-stage locations and Parisian streets as welLas the Funambule, Baptiste's dream factor', itself. The gaiety of nations is always enriched by the really bad musical, and in The Fields of Ambrdsia ('where everyone knows 'ya')' we have a genuine stinker to set alongside such splendidly awful speci evening-one nour lunger uian uie great fantTteelf-AVhen Mike Alfreds David-Glass produced a stage painting, in a CookhfflHdyftofdef? impossibility when there's so much true improbability in Stanley Spencer's life, especiallyhis love-life? It's an isolated bloomer: mostly Pam Gems puts Spencer's words back in his mouth, sometimes in a new context but always appropriately. Antony Sher scuttles and. harangues, running the words past us with endearing yet appalling zeal.

Spencer liked charades and would have loved the notion of the Cottesloe transformed into a scene-painter's vision of die Church House, vvith The Resurrection, Cookh'am under scaffolding, 'strips of Clydeside shipbuilding down die sides, Bach on die organ, and lots of space in which to talk and talk. Spencer's eye for detail conies across; also his eagerness to wear people down to' his way of thinking. Deborah Findlay, as Hilda, resists and gives way widi terrible distress; Anna Chancellor, as Patfi -cia Preece, is a snob worthy of sub-plot in Jusl William. She and her friend Dorothy Hepworth are diagnosed as Isophlsticated'. Hepworth wears the trousers in their relationship but is developed into a sympathetic character, counterbalahcvngpoor Hilda, Gwen Raverat, Henry Lamb and Dudley Tooth, Spencer's dealer, put in appearances as butts and advisers.

So does blustering Augustus John (David Collings). His role here is to admit that he sold out whereas Spencer persevered to become the -celebrated-Sir Stanley, trundling his paintingthings round' Cookham in the clapped-out family, pram. villagers. SpenceF secondarylove, the lesbian pamterTtririaPreece, slinki-Jy impersonated by Anna Chancellor, removes her clothes, or flaunts herself in blacklingerie, asa forbidding counterpoint in Stanley's true devotion. Preece's aspirations are fascinatingly suspended between her devotibmD Stanley and her own career motives.

The actress lopes through Stanley fantasies, her voice carefully conveying destructive devotion in a long, whining caress. The play loses momentum, and some of its texture, in the second act, but John Caird's production, and Sher's wonderful performance, carry us through. Bits from the diaries and version of Les Enfants du Paradis three years ago they attempted, with some success, to exploit the theatrical setting of the Funambule on the Boulevard du Temple. Callow wants instead to liberate his actors into romantic excess, his performers operating as structural stanchions in-their own story, not sleeping partners. Others have already highlighted the tactical errors in the execution; halfan hour needs cutting, the abysmal lighting needs overhauling (when you can't see faces, you don't hear voices, unless the director is Giorgio Strehler) and the sightlines are msultmgrybad.

But Helen McCrory as Garance, and Joseph Fiennes as The real thing: Spencer in 1959 The impresario old clothes William Feaver reckons Diaghilev would have found this show tame; Jann Parry agrees, saying there is little to commemorate a great entrepreneur the birch-covered stairs at the Diaghilev exhibition, in a yellow room displaying designs for the Imperial Theatres, is a rare liilllillill The lack of music, and the dimming of lights for the sake of the costumes from the Theatre Museum, means that Diaghilev. the exhibition, is hardly what Diaghilev. the producer, would have put forward under his own name-True there are a number of pleasing photographs and portraits of himself; particularly Leon Bakst's portrait of him as a young man to watch, hands in pockeis, pushy cufflinks. Nanny Dunya behind him acting as chaperone. But the settings are insufficiently momentous: birches on the stairs, crimson swags for big entrances and green trellis lining the long, empty corridors between outbreaks of exhibits.

Balletomanes may enjoy spotting Diaghilev, with his distinctive white quiff, and checking Benois and Baksi costume designs against surviving wardrobe items. Thev will note die thigh-girth of the black-and-white slashed knickers worn by Nijinsky as Albrecht in Giselle. The disappointment for those more interested in the art attached to Diaghilev is that the show stops short of Parade (191 7. in wiiich Picasso put cubism on the stage. The Barbican hopes to stage TJiaghilev 11' sometime, featuring the productions involving Braque, Derain, Gris and Matisse, who designed Le Chant du Rossignol in 1 920, painting the front cloth himself in Covent Garden.

There's no trace of this cloth, though some of the costumes were sold at auction recently. Matisse drew on them in the Forties for the setting and vestments in his-chapel at Vence. Diaghilev's career in the run-up to the Ballets Russes involved tastemongering through his magazine World of Art. This featured the one spectacular loan from Moscow to the Barbican: ajnajolica fireplace by Mikhail Vrubel celebrating the folksy bounty of the Volga. For the rest, a taste for passing off StPetersburg as Versailles and misplaced excitement over grand provincial eighteenth -century portraiture competed with visions of plenty- onion domes and ormolu galore: The Benois designs for Petrushka in 19 1 1 are one of the few indications here of the thrills Diaghilev brought to me West: the impact of dance violence in peasant ish costumes against sets of blue and scarlet, electrically lit to the delight of Matisse.

That, rather than the odd mute sketch by iko-fai Roerich for Tlie Rite of Spring, makes the exhibition thrum a liule. That and tlie Rodin statuette of Nijinksy kneeing his armpit. itsouko, Diaghilev's favourite scent, and the sou nd of music Diaghilev had commissioned (sorely missed at the Barbican show) Paul Dart, designer of the new jexhibitioh, has done what he can with an intransigent building and a limited budget; Ahn curator, has secured some gems and some duds: one of the "Roerich set designs, as art historian Kenneth Archer has proved, is not for Tlie Rite of Spring, although the eostume designs are. A pity-that a video of the ballet, reconstructed by Archer and Millicent Hod-son, based on Roerich 's designs and Nijinsky choreography, is not shown during the exhibition -it gives a sense of how shocking the 1913 original must have More films and videos would be welcome, as a reminder that Diaghilev's is a living legacy. We don't see 'his' ballets performed by British companies as often as we-used to (the Royal Ballet's recent travesty of Petrushka is best forgotten) but several have re-entered the repertoires of the Monte Carlo and Kirov ballet companies, as we saw last year.

Russia is rapidiy recovering its missing Ballets Russes past. Diaghilev's company remained' in exile once the Revolution started.) Indeed, it is because the Russians planin 1998 'tp commemorate the centenary of Diaghilev's World of Art magazine that Ann Kodicek had to borrow the early material now. She hopes to be able to mount a second exhibition, covering the 1914-1929 years ol the Ballets Russes. The cash-strapped Theatre Museum, which should be undertaking this kind of ambitious project, is a.dead space at the heart of Covent Garden. has been offered an archive of Diaghilev's papers, including contracts, accounts and overspent.

budgetsBut what the museum really needs is another Big Serge, to come to its rescue and display its trea -sures with more panache than the concrete Barbican conjure up. Diaghilev Barbican Gallery, London UC2, to 14 April treat for ballet-lovers a crimson Velvet-cloak encrusted with fine gold embroidery. Never seen in the West before, it is the Queen's cloak from the first ever production of The Sleeping Beautyby theimpe-, rial Ballet in 1:890. Clearly, overspending on th is bal- let (as the BBC's The House has revealed.) is an old tradition. When Serge Diaghilev mounted his production of The Sleeping Beauty in 1921 for his Ballets Russes company, it was in homage to the one he had loved in his youth.

Although its lavish designs bankrupted him, he managed somehow, as always, tp keep the Ballets Russes afloat. (A caricature early in the exhibition shows him milking a rich Russian princess for money, long before he cultivated patrons in the West.) His genius was for making things happen, bringing artists, composers and performers together in extraordinary collaborations opera as well as ballet. Unlike many modern-day impresarios, his approach was hands-on: he left his staihp on everything he produced, rescuing productions in crisis, engineering scandals, creating choreographers to replace those who no longer served his needs. His first excursions to the West, in the early years of this century, amazed audiences with (to. them) etxotic Russian art, music, operas and ballets.

The exhibition, which stops-short at 1914, shows how ravishing the designs were, mostly by Leon Bakst and Alexandre Benois; but it also reveals where the artists were coming from, alongside works by their contemporaries who were not regular members of the Ballets Russes's inner circie. The Barbican 's boast, however, that tiiis is the first major exhibition to celebrate Diaghilev's achievements, is untrue. Richard Buckle's magnificently theatrical Diaghilev exhibition, mounted first for the Edinburgh Festival in. 1954, then brought to London by the Observer, is etched on. many people's memories not least for the smell of Bead generation: The Ballet Russes's Firebird of 1910.