Evening Standard du lieu suivant : London, Greater London, England • 38

Reviews EVENING STANDARD 4 on the couch 38 THURSDAY 19 DECEMBER 1996 Little Eyolf Swan Stratford NICHOLAS DEJONGH A CONSULTANT pyschother-apist at Broadmoor has' written a programme note for Adrian spare and eloquent production of Little Eyolf perhaps the least known and performed of last plays And quite right too For the world of very late Ibsen is just the place for a literary-minded therapist to go prospecting stiff with the sort of obvious symbolism family secrets and guilts in which Freud took such a healthy productive interest The danger is that Ibsen often makes his self-conscious characters unnaturally eager to analyse each others behaviour or to draw attention to the pathos of their lives Noble minimises these tendencies by keeping tone and context cool and unhistrionic He sensibly loosens the drowning of crippled son Eyolt impells his wife Rita whose disconsolate and emotionally volatile condition is imposingly conveyed by Joanne Pearce to break the codes of reticence psychology is astute When revealing jealousy of her own son Rita is really disclosing anxieties about the fragility of her marriage and passionate attachment to his half-sister Asta (Derbhle Crotty) Both Glenister and Miss Crotty despite one revealing clinch never quite discover a In UWe Eyolf Psychological breaking point: Joanne Pearce and Robert winsome ardour rather than the not looking at her husband while passion of a man coaxing a girl into she repetitively flexes her fingers his arms and ftirther but never goes as far as holding Noble sensibly queries out a hand happy ending with Allmers and min repertory Box office: 01789 Rita reconciled: Miss Pearce stands 295621 way of suggesting what apparently incestuous ties exist between brother and sister Damian Lewis as the young engineer who draws Asta away from her sway exudes roll Les Arts Florissants Barbican TOM SUTCLIFFE realistic grip Instead of cluttered the stage is bare apart from table chairs and chaise longue Instead of the specified spectacular rural scenes designer Rob Howell achieves a pre-impressionistic glow blue-green and gold back-cloths evoking Qords and woods The two crucial secrets sealed the past and precipitating disaster in the present depend upon the sexuality of Alfred Allmers whom an intense bearded Robert Glenister plays with the air of a man reluctant to look a mirror straight in the eye The death by The skill and expressiveness of the star singer Sarah Connolly spot-lit defects elsewhere Connolly with her colourful lower register and dramatic sense projected the characters of Sappho and Iphise brilliantly Jean-Paul Mercury combined suppleness and wit with a slightly awkward insistence Thierry Tyrtaeus provided welcome energy and attack but with rough technical edges The purity of Mary-seult shepherdess was useftiL Sophie Daneman as H6b6 and Egl6 and Paul Agnew both sang with proper baroque style while Christie himself was in urbane attentive vein of poetry music and dance the lyric talents which are the alternative title The three acts of the opera are self-contained stories about respectively love for Alcaeus Iphise's love for the vocally gifted Spartan warrior Tyrtaeus and yen for a ballet-dancing shepherdess called Egl6 The last act is the cream stuffed with superbly memorable dance material including a delicious Musette en rondeau with a pair of French indoors bagpipes making the rustic effect that Berlioz recreated for the shepherds in Christ The high points of the evening were the many dances I expect the Barbican Hall to be quite so packed last night for Les d'Hdbd (1739) by Jean-FhUippe Rameau Admittedly William Christie and his fine Arts Florissants orchestra have made a lot of CDs But surprising the baroque craze extends to Rameau since his beautiful rhythmically nuanced art has its longueurs even when judiciously cut as this long unstaged performance was elegantly conversational vocal writing is short-winded and earthbound beside melodiousness In fact Rameau who was condemned by poisonous enemies in his day as disgracefully modem and who only got down to opera when he was a famous musical theorist aged 50 sounds quite like a 40-years-late Purcell with less melodic skilL Opera-ballet is scarcely dramatic just the sort of thing to divert a fashionably bored Versailles court the Olympian cupbearer is so tired of eternal pleasure that she heads off by Eurostar to the banks of the Seine to sample the pleasures IbrihCK No stars adequate it good irk very good kkk outstanding poor GA1M1CK 0171 494 50S5312 1990(aobk8lee) Sim New Ferwt WDfNEkOFlIMAJOIAWAIDS THEATRES SUZANNE BEITBH PIP PONAGHT DOMHnON1kkeSm0171 656 UK 0990 204 020420 0000(btafce) Gm4 16 6096312 19970M0614 903 TbtMlieCMllTf HlUt DISNEY'S BEAUTY AND THE BEAST OjailfairWbookinpnowapca APOLLO 494 5070344 4444 THEY'RE BACK! 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