Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Nadia Anim, Emma Bispham, Richard Bremmer, Patrick Brennan, George Caple, Paul Duckworth, Marc Elliot, Cerith Flinn, Emily Hughes, Nathan McMullen, Zelina Rebeiro, Golda Rosheuvel, Keddy Sutton, Liam Tobin.
There are moments in theatre that leave you breathless, where what unfolds on stage is enough to keep you mind whirring at such a pace that sleep, that welcome landing post in choppy waters between days, is impossible, that what has been seen in that form, will leave you reliving every sequence over and over again!
Losing your way is perhaps inevitable, but not one that should suggest there is no purpose, for whilst you might not understand the design on your life, it is your actions and responses to others’ needs and desires which sets the chains of life in motions, One second of indiscretion can take a life away, one lie past the lips can destroy a community and to capture the lyric in between takes courage, in direction, in performance and in its writing.
In Robert Farquhar the courage is matched by the vision, to take Ibsen’s classic five act play Peer Gynt and turn it into a production that in every moment breathes purity, even in the darkness, more poetic than a room full of scholars discussing the merits of Kerouac alongside Hughes, Lanyer and McGough. The Big I Am is the fulfilment of a promise made, of weaving the inherent ability in the writer and producing something truly outstanding.
Courage and vision, not only in the writing but in the direction of the superb Nick Bagnall, the sound, the matchless light design by Kay Harding and wardrobe, this beauty is natural, it is a symbol of the how we are when we are young, boastful, enigmatic, radiant, full of raw passion but one that can easily be turned into a fire that consumes everything around it, an inferno born of arrogance, steel and the pouring of metaphorical petrol on all who have troubles with you.
To convey such passionate anger at the world takes that same courage and vision displayed by the writer and director, and in Nathan McMullen as the young Peer Gynt, this is the event that marks his first Everyman season as a complete success. A performance that catches the imagination in the same extraordinary way that George Caple conveyed in A Clockwork Orange earlier in the season.
It is not all about Peer Gynt though, it is those around him who suffer in the extremes of his grasp, who tumble in the darkness, the ever magical Keddy Sutton as his mother giving arguably the finest performance of her career so far, a bold statement when you consider all she has achieved, Emily Hughes as Cynthia, the first person to suffer under his weight of expectation and dismissive behaviour, Liam Tobin as the excess filled middle aged Peer catching the eye with his service to a Godless nation and Golda Rosheuval, who had entranced so many with her portrayal as Othello, showing the humour wonderfully as Cynthia’s mother.
Bold, beautiful and extraordinary, peerless. Robert Farquhar’s The Big I Am will leave you breathless.
Ian D. Hall