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Stars explained: * A production of no real merit
with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not
enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real
life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A
good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely
achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a
great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major
flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic
which lifts theatre to another plane. |
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Different brush strokes of sex Picasso's Women Part 1 Stage 2 The Crescent Studio ***** THIS is a bit of a novelty for Stage 2 –
a cast in single figures! Just eight people! Surely some mistake.
But what an eight. You had to keep reminding
yourself that you were watching not only amateurs but a youth theatre.
It is no exaggeration to say I have reviewed professional productions
which fall well short of this standard. True there was the odd verbal stumble on opening
night but nothing worthy of mention and certainly nothing to detract
from eight, confident, believable and engaging performances as we looked
at four of the eight women featured in Brian McAvera's 2000 play – four
more are running on alternate nights. The original is eight stand alone monologues but this being Stage 2 it has been adapted into duologues as Picasso's life is examined through . . . some . . . of the women in his life – you suspect that even Stage 2 could not provide enough cast for a full sexual roll call. The man appears to make merely randy look like celibacy. I suspect most people know little more than Pablo
Picasso was Spanish and probably the most influential and famous artist
of the 20th century. He co-founded cubism, lived in Paris,
and if you find one of his paintings in your granny's attic you, your
children, your children's children, your children's children's children
and so on would never have to work again. But as for his personal life? Probably about as
well known as that of Rembrandt or Constable. So what do we glean from
McAvera's story of Picasso though his turbulent relationships? Well it seems that morality and fidelity among
the artist set in France was . . . flexible; Picasso worked on the basis
that all women in the world belonged to him and he just had to select
any he wanted at any particular time with a similar attitude to
relationships as a rutting stag. As for his performance, well depending upon who
you talked to, or in this case, who talked to you he could be tender and
sensual or “he had a great time himself but wasn't interested in anyone
else.” Megan Santer gave an accomplished performance as
the first of the eight women, Fernande Olivier, his first great love who
had a colourful past of sexual assault and forced marriage before she
became first an artist's model and then Picasso's, and no one
else's, model. She was his live in lover from 1904 to 1909. She is
young, if hardly innocent, and tells her tale with her attentive lover
played with boyish charm by Connor Fox. She introduced Picasso to the most tragic of his
many women, Eva Gouel who shared his life from 1910 to 1915, played
convincingly by Elin Dowsett. Eva was dying of TB and was pushed around
by her friend played by Abi Collier who could perhaps see though Picasso
more than his lover. Dowsett, with the pale make up of a white-faced
clown, looks and sounds as if death is fast approaching, frail and
vulnerable but we discover that behind what has become the tragic
curtain call of her life have been scenes of scheming and manipulation
to get the men and money she wants – including Picasso. While Eva is preparing to meet her maker
Gaby Lesinasse appears on Picasso's radar. Gaby, an item from 1915 to
1917, is played with wonderful timing and fun by Charlie Reilly along
with her wealthy American husband Herbert, played again for laughs and
with a passable American accent by Rowan Turner-Powell - and how the
production needed them. After the angst of Fernande and the deathbed
revelations of Eva the audience needed a bout of matter of fact plain
speaking - and a few laughs - and the knock-about pair provided both in
abundance.
Gaby is played as a sort of French equivalent of
jolly hockey sticks who had the view that she was not going to be one of
Pablo's sexual conquests – but, by Jove, he would be one of hers, what! Picasso was smitten to the extent he showered her
with paintings and a proposal of marriage but she was one of the few
women to reject him and it was not until the 1980s that her brief
relationship came to light. Her only regret was that she was known as
Picasso's lost mistress rather than as Herbert's wife. Which brought us to Olga Kokhlova, a dancer in
Diaghilev's troupe when she met Picasso who was designing the set and
costumes of a new ballet, Parade. She was in his life from 1917 to 1927. The pair
married and in 1921 Picasso's son Paulo was born but that was hardly
enough to tie a sexual predator such as Picasso down The unstable Olga, played with a manic intensity
by Emily Nabney with her son played by Luca Hoffman, finally left
Picasso in 1935 but remained married leaving Paulo as the only
legitimate offspring. Nabney shows us a woman who feels betrayed, angry
and cheated while her son, who shows some nice humorous touches, is
frightened of his domineering father. When the relationship ended
Picasso painted Olga in a brutal vicious way and perhaps took out his
anger in what became open warfare rather than a relationship on Paulo
who was always put down and treated like a menial servant rather than a
son. He eventually became an alcoholic. The set is simple with a backdrop of Picasso paintings associated with the women. The costumes look authentic for the period and the direction by Liz Light, with little in the way of props to work with, brings each character to vibrant life in what is a piece of top notch theatre with raw emotions and real passion. Picasso's Women Part 1 is on again on Thursday 19
January 2012 and Saturday 21 January while Picasso's Women Part 2 is on
Wednesday 18 January, Friday 20 January and Saturday 21 January. The
running time, including 20 minute interval, is approximately 2h 30m. Roger Clarke Great art, pity about
the man Picasso's Women Part 2 Stage 2 The Crescent Studio ***** IF ANYONE
harboured any lingering doubts that Picasso was probably not a suitable
candidate for
beatification then part two of his life through the eyes of his
lovers should dispel them.
This is the second half of
the artist's life from middle age to death though the eyes of
the final four great loves, or at least lusts, of his life
chronicled in Brian McAvera's original eight
monologues. As in the first half Stage 2,
under the direction of Liz Light, have taken a character mentioned in
the monologue narrative and expanded it into a second part which has the
dual advantage of providing roles for twice the number of actors and
creates added interest for both cast and audience with verbal sparring,
quips and asides. Mind you it does mean everyone has to be on the ball and it is a tribute to the hard work that must have gone that the ball was kept very much in the air in each of the four shades of this particular palette - eight if Part 1 is included. In Part 1 we discovered that
Pablo was none too keen on his son Paulo, but perhaps that was because
of the disintegration of the relationship with
the boy's mother, and Picasso's first wife,
Olga. In Part 2 we discover that
Picasso does in fact show a great deal of interest in children -
but not, unfortunately,
in his own. His interest is in children
who are young, nubile and in the case of Marie-Thérèse Walter,
“pneumatic”. Played by Sasha Butler, she
was 17 when he first seduced her in 1927 and she knew
nothing of art, or anything really, and did not even know who he was. Butler gives us a sort of French Eliza Doolittle, all Cockney and common sense, bright as a button without an intellectual thought in her pretty head, but enough charm, mostly physical, to make an old, or at least much older man very happy. Picasso was 48 at the time. She fathered his daughter
Maya and held out the vain hope Picasso would eventually marry her. He
never did and she hanged herself four years after his death in one of
the most dramatic scenes if all eight duologues. Marie-Thérèse was encouraged
by her mother, a sort of Hyacinth Bucket character in the hands of Flo
Cathcart, who could see, if not exactly an
ideal relationship, at least a man with money, influence and a chance of
some sort of immortality in his paintings. The teenager came along while
he was still living with wife Olga and the next one, Dora Marr was in
the frame while Marie-Thérèse was caring for new born Maya. Marr, who was sterile, was a
celebrated artist and photographer in her own right so was Picasso's
equal in many ways when their affair officially started in 1936 to last
until 1945. She was also older, by his
standards, being 29 to his 54. The relationship was tumultuous; she
suffered mood swings and was treated by Picasso's friend psychoanalyst
Jacques Lacan. Picasso eventually had her committed to an asylum where
she suffered brutal electric shock treatment which destroyed her mind
and her spirit. Nice man. She was one of two of
Picasso's eight significant women to go mad -
Olga became delusional -and in Chloe Jones we
can feel Dora's anguish and pain in a stunning
performance ably matched by the nurse, played by Rosalyne Norford, who
takes a fair old battering from the violent Dora, who, in turn,
receives a remarkably realistic slap for her pains at the end of one
particularly harrowing episode. If anyone needs an Ophelia
quickly Chloe plays a quite remarkable mad
woman. A memorable performance. Not surprisingly for a
philanderer who saw hedonism as his religion, while Dora was being
plugged in to the Parisian mains Pablo had moved on to painter Françoise
Gilot, played with girlish charm by Rosa Simonet, who met Picasso with
her artist friend Genevieve, played by Sarah Kemp. The pair started like
giggling schoolgirls with a secret to tell growing
into women telling a story with, as with all Picasso's
relationships, a more
tragic edge. The affair started around in
1943 although she was not officially his lover until 1945. It was the
final straw for Dora who suffered a complete mental breakdown. Picasso managed to stride
though the war as if it did not concern him, treating everyone, French
or German with equal disdain, using those who could be helpful and
discarding those who couldn't, much as he treated his women. It was to his shame that he
refused to use his extensive contacts with both the German and French
authorities to save his friend, artist and writer Max Jacob who died on
his way to a concentration camp.
His relationship with
Françoise, 21 to his 63, was on more equal terms then many in that she
stood up for herself and even walked out on him with her dignity more or
less intact. She bore him Claude and Paloma before leaving - a
departure which devastated Picasso. She rubbed
salt in that wound by marrying another artist. Picasso had his revenge
though. He used his influence to ensure neither she
nor her artist husband would ever sell or exhibit a painting in any
meaningful way in France again - but the sanctions would be lifted
if she was to divorce her husband and marry him. This was 1953 and Françoise filed the papers for divorce only to discover that Picasso had deceived her. He had already secretly married his last great love Jacqueline Roque, who was 34, a month earlier. Françoise perhaps had the last laugh though. She is the sole survivor. She has published books about her life with Picasso, later married US vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk and still paints and exhibits in New York and Paris. Jacqueline, played by Helen
Carter, was a sales assistant in the Madoura Pottery Studio in Vallauris,
where Picasso created his ceramics and Carter gave us an insecure,
possessive woman who gloried in the important visitors to Picasso's home
– more impressed with Gary Cooper than
she was with her husband – but she would not let
anyone get too near the aging artist, protecting her prize and
fighting a constant running battle with Françoise and
his own children. She banished her own daughter
to boarding school, irreparably damaging that relationship, devoting
herself to Picasso. She refused to allow his
children to even come to his funeral and tried to control every aspect
of the artist's life while submitting herself to any indignity and ill
treatment the octogenarian Picasso dished out. She was with him when he died in 1973, aged 91, refusing to believe he was dead and climbing into bed with him to keep him warm. She killed herself with a gun thirteen years later, the second suicide of Picasso's women. As with Part 1 the costumes
all look authentic for the period as we move from the 1920s to the 1970s
and in the black box staging of the studio each character stands out
like a colourful beacon helped by some very skillful, simple but
effective lighting. It might be a little long for studio seating, 2h 30m part 1 and 2h 15m part 2 but there is no denying the quality of a collection of remarkable performances in a talented production which is at times quite brilliant and deserving of a wider audience.
Roger Clarke
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