Theatre - Kate Kellaway succumbs to a visionary adaptation of Janacek
Above, a man is swimming towards us. The audience and the stage are the deeps. His projected image is upside down - the black surface of the piano below him shines like a pool. He is larger than life and lost. Love is his element. The young man in the Czech composer Leos Janacek's Diary of One Who Vanished has fallen for a gypsy girl. "Everything is up-ended," he complains. The director, Deborah Warner, has taken his awkward, literal words and made them visionary.
Janacek intended that this should be no ordinary song cycle - he even supplied stage directions. But this is not an easy piece to perform as theatre - hence, perhaps, this collaboration between the National Theatre and ENO. In a sense, almost nothing happens. For most of 45 minutes, the young man battles with his desire and fear. The gypsy is forbidden fruit of the forest: she has dark skin; she is the unknown. She is everything his parents would not like. But the more he cautions himself against her, the more certain his seduction becomes.
Ian Bostridge, as the young man, is perfectly cast. He has a marvellous intensity; he can convey febrile anguish as easily as breathe. His diction is excellent: he sees to it that not a word of Seamus Heaney's libretto (a new version of poems by Ozef Kalda) is lost. And his voice scales the cruelly high notes with no sign of strain. In his loose white shirt and braces, he subverts the uniform of the concert performer. This is appropriate to the music, too, which is about boundaries overstepped and convention overturned.
Heaney's often forthright words stand out beautifully against the complicated anguish of the music. And the pianist, Julius Drake, plays with a kind of rapture. Sometimes, when Bostridge turns to the piano, it is as if the music were his inner self and Drake the heart of the piece.
Ruby Philogene appears bare-foot (a nice contrast to the young man's overpolished, mirror-black shoes) and makes her way up from the stalls to the stage in jeans. She approaches the piano, quiet as a cat. There is something inward about her pursuit; she is stealthy but not obviously soliciting. She circles him calmly, her relaxation perfectly contrasted by his neurotic ardour. Philogene sings with steady beauty and has a formidable presence. When she asks, "Does my colour disturb you?" she rises to her feet with a composure that has something like menace in it. The piano accompaniment trips covertly, as if it knew already what the young man cannot yet embrace. It is like a heart beating too fast.
Warner has both singers wearing blindfolds - at least some of the time - perhaps to extend the idea of the "diary of one who vanished". Both lovers must vanish into each other and the young man must recognise that "to find my life I lose it". The blindfolds also intensify the sensuality of the piece: touch without sight. They eventually consummate their love under the piano - a brave moment (Warner does not run away from difficulty), but unnecessarily explicit.
Jean Kalman, the lighting designer, earns particular mention. He is a poet of light and punctuates the piece with it. All his and Warner's effects are simple: with the help of knotted black curtains and blinds, day comes and goes, a burst of autumn, a bright day. At the end, in another projected image like the one that began the piece, we see the young man's hand reflected on the piano's shiny surface as if in farewell. It is a beautiful, agitated sight. And there is chaos in the music, too, a sense of turbulent farewell. "Life's doorway stands open," he sings. But his last high notes bring on a dull dawn.
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