Picasso’s Artful Occupation – review
posted on MARCH 15, 2014 by ANNA SAVVA in OFF WEST END, REVIEWS with NO COMMENTS
Our Rating:
The premise of this latest work from established fringe theatre playwright
Ian Buckley is rather brilliant. The play contains all the ingredients for an
exciting and thought provoking piece of new theatre, one with the potential to
bring fresh perspective and new emotional depth to cold historical fact.
The year is 1940. The setting of Nazi occupied Paris, with its atmosphere
of dark political intrigue and vengeful subterfuge provides the perfect
backdrop for an exploration into the enduring value of art, amid the
devastating impact of war.
Based on true events, the dim lit subterranean venue of the Baron’s Court
makes the perfect stand-in for the Parisian bank vault where Nazi Soldiers
Frisch (Roberto Landi) and Hebbel (David O’Connor)
have been called to inventory artworks. As the title suggests, they find
themselves pitted against the wit and ingenuity of none other than Pablo
Picasso (Gary Heron), arguably the most prolific artist of the 21st
century. Along with many others, he was also an artist whose modernist
work was despised by the Nazi regime, and who was singled out by Hitler as
being a ‘Bolshevik degenerate’. Indeed, many of his works and those of his
contemporaries Dali, Legar and Miro
were later destroyed in a massive bonfire.
Within this highly strung atmosphere the resulting psychological tussle
between the three makes for absurdly comic viewing. However there is a graver
point here, which the play promises but doesn’t entirely deliver.
How did the creative spirit endure in a culture of fear and totalitarian
conformity? The Nazis were notorious for organised looting and art theft. The
atmosphere of menace ought to have been more palpable. Despite the play’s
‘artful’ intent, rallies of verbal chess and psychological trickery, the
Picasso of this play sounded more like the artful dodger than iconic genius.
The Nazis were soft caricatures, bordering on the ‘Allo
‘Allo school of villainy, and because of
this much of the sense of jeopardy was lost and with it the play’s intellectual
integrity.
Gary Heron’s Picasso only manages to tie it together briefly at the end
when he reflects that he has to be “Artful as sin, as artful as them” in order
to survive. Even this left the audience with a bitter aftertaste, that essentially
no one can be trusted, which doesn’t say anything authentic about the genius of
Picasso, but more wallows in the failings of human nature.
Yet the acting is solid across the board, with a great deal of physical
humour and a particularly strong performance by Roberto Landi
in his stage debut as the nervous and sinister Frisch. The set, with its
racks of framed Picasso prints, is visually engaging. The lighting design
heightens the warmth and intimacy of the small space, making for a memorable
dramatic entrance by torch light.
Overall an enjoyable, well-acted play, with some original insights and
humorous verbal rallies, but which however promises more than it
delivers. Picasso’s Artful Occupation will doubtlessly become
tighter with each performance.
Barons Court Theatre
The Curtains Up, 28a Comeragh Road, London W14 9HP
Box Office: 020 8932 4747
See before 30th March 2014