Low Down
Buchner's epic masterpiece of the French revolution, condensed into a fast-paced 60 minutes by young enthusiastic company
Review
If you ask theatre professionals what their personal favourite plays are that they know they will never see produced, Buchner's 'Dantons Death' always features highly.
It is my favourite play., a sprawling political, philosophical epic of the French Revolution eating itself from within.
Written in 1835, when Buchner was just 22, it is as politically relevant today as it was then. We still revel in shooting down those we once called heroes. At its full-length, it will run at about 4 hours. Danton's trial itself can run at nearly an hour, so i take my hat off to the Jacobins for squeezing it into one hour and still managing to convey much of the power of the original text, though the phrase in the programme 'additional dialogue by' did cause my heart to skip a beat.
Two performances stand out and make this a worthy play to see: Pany Heliotis as a thoughtful Robespierre, ruling over the destruction of those he once called 'comrade' for the sake of staying in power, and Vyvyan Almond as Fouquier who who manages to give both an over-the-top and yet quite subtle performance as the chief prosecutor.
Edmund Digby Jones's Danton belongs to the school of 'shouting and enunciating slowly' acting and I want a bit more light and shade in my Danton as he sees the world he created come to destroy him, but the rest of the cast give enthusiastic performances and this is generally a solid and brave try.
Reviewed by JG 15th August 2007
