Evening Standard from London, Greater London, England • 159

I 14 MONDAY 15 DECEMBER 1997 EVENING STANDARD iltomfe iie )1 by BOBIW STRINGER Arts Correspondent Music filSt ShOW for century is big hit AN EXTRAORDINARY venue was added to already remarkable 42 performances at comes as a blessing to Brian Daubney co-ordinator of a campaign to get Lottery money to turn the building into a living museum The ripples from the £38 billion Cable and Wireless merger which absorbed Mercury Communications have hit the Don-mar Warehouse in Covent Garden The disappearance of Mercury principal sponsor of the main Donmar season has brought its three-year £450000 deal to a sudden end a year before expected range last night when actress Fiona Shaw gave the first licensed performance at Music Hall for more than 100 years More than 300 people including French Ambassador Jean Gu6ginou crammed into the derelict old music hall the oldest in the world to hear Miss Shaw read great 20th century poem The Waste Land The hall was filled to capacity and people who turned up hoping to buy a ticket had to be turned away What they missed was not a reading but a passionate re-enactment of the poem by Miss Shaw who brought it vividly to life in all its range and complexity Its arrival for BM by Nicholas deJongh The Waste Land Wilton Music Hall from the city to the very East End riverside world in which we were Shaw's performance is a world away from Eliot's woebegone reading It's a poem which speaks with a great repertoire of voices With plenty of gesture and mime some a little too obvious Shaw speaks all of them with bravura gusto her uttering of the poem's penultimate cries in a great roar She makes the poem into a dramatic scenario a litany of historic and ordinary voices Warner's vigorously theatrical production may sometimes encourage Shaw into excessive histrionics But the dramatic lighting designs of Jean Kalman are a dream He projects Shaw's silhouette and a circle of light against the back wall Then he leaves everything but her face in darkness while a blown-up image of a grand piano sets the scene Meed at £1250 and £10 this daring performance is expensive but it casts a rare spell in an unmissable ghost theatre Plays twice nightly (730 and 845) until 11 January Tickets from National Theatre 0171 928 2252 IT WAS NOT as eerie as catching sight of a but still a spine-tingling pleasure The lights had been extinguished and in the expectant stillness footsteps echoed and approached as though they had a very long way to come At last the foot-stepper arrived and could be dimly seen on stage lighting a lamp Burial of the intoned Fiona Shaw a nicely ironic thing to say since her voice was raising the moribund bringing this exquisite theatre back to its original role after 112 years of misuse Miss Shaw's 37-minute marathon her dramatising of that great quintessence of the 20th century blues TS The Waste Land has gone down tremendously in New York Paris Toronto Brussels and Cork But those cities did not enjoy the sensational aptness of the production's London staging The director Deborah Warner who staged one piece of theatre in the defunct St Pancras Hotel obviously relishes the melancholia and ghostly romanticism which clings to fine disused buildings Wilton's Music Hall which fell foul of fire regulations in 1885 and became a rag warehouse is ideal for Eliot For The Waste Land laments a post-war western world beset by decline and decay reeking of barrenness and Wilton's air of ruined beauty and decrepitude reflects the Waste atmosphere more the poem tracks down Picture: ALASTAIR MUIR Bravura show: Fiona performance has gone down well in New York Paris and now London 1 'V 1 7 I iillMUP i Jii 'i 'r vv: I s- It might be snowing outside: But at least you can curl up by th fire call up all your friends and relatives around the country on the phone for as long as you like without paying a penny a -1 'OP 1 to 1 'V 1- tt il i 'J 'Vr-: Including VAT 175 long distanca rtien to ngioral and national UX alh ON to non-geognpWt numbeft (indudk mobiles) and alls irude uslngthe Cable AWlreleu Calling Card do not qualify for this promotionThJi offer is only available to SmartCatt UKUCaR and tocalCaU custonwn Jervice provisioning may take up to ten days For quality of service purposes we may occasionally monitor or record your telephone alls whh Cable.