Holy Fool at Park Theatre

BOM! BOM! BOM! BOM! BOM! BOM! BOM! BOM!

That is the sound of a timpani shouting ‘Rejoice! Rejoice! You must rejoice!’.

So observes Nina, Dmitri Shostakovich’s first wife, after the premiere of his Fifth Symphony. Forced to fall in line, Shostakovich has really spelled it out for them this time. The Fifth gives the authorities the stirring work they wanted. But it is also a wry joke at their expense.

Which brings us to the two questions at the heart of this play. Who does art belong to? And how do you practise it when a “wrong note” could cost you your liberty, or your life?

But first, PIZZA.

Danny sniffs his pizza

This review is brought to you by the excellent margherita I had at Park Theatre before the show. It alone would have made the evening worthwhile. Luckily, it was merely the amuse-bouche ahead of a two-hour-20-minute theatrical main course.

Holy Fool opens on the first night of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Shostakovich’s second opera. It’s a hit… right up until Stalin walks out. Pravda’s condemnation soon follows, and Shostakovich finds himself in a cell awaiting interrogation.

His Fifth symphony wins him back into the establishment’s good graces and into a fancy apartment (by Soviet standards). But the pressure to toe the Party line never lets up. They could come for him at any moment. The phone could ring, and the moustachioed man of steel himself might be on the other end.

The play sharply demonstrates that an artist is shaped by circumstance as much as by his own whims. The state forces Shostakovich to find new ways to express himself. Nina, meanwhile, keeps his ego in check, bringing him down to earth with grace or, when needed, a healthy dose of sarcasm.

Later a Party-faithful plumber visits with his flag-bearing daughter, Katya. She is inspired by Shostakovich. He tells her he would never join the Party – a promise that will come back to haunt them both.

The team got a good view at the Park 200 space

I’m half Russian, and therefore predisposed to like old, “great”, Russian culture. It makes me feel smug and intellectual to discuss it with friends, as if I somehow get it more despite growing up almost exclusively in Guildford.

So I wanted to like this play. The cast is strong and the story is compelling. The acting was excellent and delivered without a single slip.

But for me the staging could have been more creative. The trailer showed me Shostakovich walking an imaginary tightrope beneath a swinging light bulb – an image dripping with stagecraft and symbolism.

Nothing like this makes it into the show. Instead, rooms are rendered as rooms. Furniture is awkwardly rearranged between scenes. Sound effects announce what’s happening offstage. The musings of Shostakovich’s listeners are piped in through speakers, drowning out any thoughts we, the actual audience, might have had. The music itself, which ought to be the play’s secret weapon, mostly stays in the background.

The cast receive a well-earned round of applause

This is clearest when the action moves to America, as a vast projection of a comfortable mid-century American suburb fills the back wall. Perhaps it is meant to be a statement on American excess. After an evening of being told exactly where we are, it felt like yet more exposition.

Shostakovich made art that said one thing while meaning another and trusted his listeners to hear between the notes. Holy Fool doesn’t take the same risks.

Illustration by Pat Thomas for our Cultural Calendar.