Evening Standard from London, Greater London, England • 52

52 MONDAY 12 OCTOBER 1998 Reviews EVENING STANDARD Raw method in the madness "i Pidgin Macbeth Piccadilly Theatre NICK CURTIS second half and turns out to be very hinny and surprisingly easy to follow as long as you know the plot already It actually feels oddly subversive to collude with a bunch of half-naked nutters on this bizarre free-form experiment As a Campbell fan who shares his fascination with the shameful genesis and current application of Pidgin I may be too forgiving of the ramshackle nature This is seat-of-the-pants theatre as raw and disorganised as it is unusual If that sounds alluring go along: but please bone up on original first In repertory Box office 0171 369 1734 NEVER mind the Dome how about an easy-to-leam world language for the new millennium? British antic visionary Ken Campbell has translated Macbeth into Pidgin the simple patios derived by enslaved antipodean island tribesmen from their British captors in the 1860s in a bid to promote it as a universal lingua franca The resulting performance is the kind of anarchic erratically brilliant and downright strange event one expects of Campbell a hilarious diversion for those who have a working knowledge of Macbeth incomprehensible for those who Campbell kicks off with an informal discourse on the history and structure of a language that has virtually no grammar where the phrase am translates simply as Pidgin is so simple he says that eight of his actors including his voluptuous daughter and co-director Daisy have memorised the entire text so we can choose our own That done (we selected the mad-haired Roddy McDevitt with Daisy as Lady M) the male actors uncover scrawny white bodies adorned with tribal paintings and genital sheathes and the cast blunder through most of acts I and on a bare stage accompanied by musical whoops and plonks and explanatory interruptions This takes about 20 minutes then Ken suggests an interval and both cast and audience head for the bars This shambolic start establishes the informal atmosphere and gives one a chance to assimilate the language The limited vocabulary and cut-and-paste constructions of Pidgin especially the indiscriminate use of to denote any person or thing wreaks havoc with verse but throws up numerous poetic constructions and even more humorous ones speculation about whether the three witches truly exist becomes the beautifully economical and Lady Macbeth describes her as blong Mistakes deaths and disasters are all reduced to the deliciously evocative word The story flows more freely in the Alastair Muir Sheer magnificance shines through the grey sheen London Symphony Orchestra Barbican RICK JONES black chill of the war years Nothing was as desolate as the cor anglais solo hard on the first movement's thrilling sequence of explosive chords and icy percussion Rostropovich sought the player out during the applause and kissed her twice The other soloists only got a wave In the second the piccol-ist shone again The third belonged to the grey toned violas whose quick heavy- treading march did not even pause for breath I understand grey is in this year first so that we were robbed of the opportunity to feel as shortchanged as did thosel946 Muscovites who knew the sombre hour-long Symphony No 8 Ninth Symphonies were supposed to be big Russia expected fireworks but instead heard a jaunty piccolo with a tune like a playground taunt Rostropovich conducted a gripping performance here Faint mockery lurked beneath the staves Each wind soloists was excellent The 8th written in 1943 is dark and profound Rostropovich felt the RIGHT now London cannot hear enough Shostakovich The reputation of the Russian composer has never been greater with the British public He can fill the Barbican twice with a single programme What audiences like about his music is the absence of what Anthony Payne once called bullshit He never wrote a note that did not make sense Yet his music is undeniably modern and speaks directly about 20th century life Some say he wore his heart on his sleeve but it was a big heart No one interprets his music with more depth than his young friend Rostropovich who conducted the London Symphony Orchestra on Saturday in a programme which included the 8th and 9th symphonies in reverse order ie with the lighter stuff Rating adequate good very good outstanding poor ANOTHER GREAT STANDARD GIVEAWAY iWINSTANTjRRIZES You could fly supersonic on Concorde or win this Vauxhall Tigra Instantly with London Lucky Wallets TODAYJSIMYSTERYJRRIZES You could be jetting off on a champagne flight on Concorde or on a luxurious holiday to Barbados These are just two of the fantastic prizes you could win instantly with London Lucky Wallets A London Lucky Wallet was inside last copy of ES magazine Look 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