Saturday, July 20, 2013
Gabriel, Shakespeare's Globe, review
Was it the heat at the scorching inaugural matinée that made me succumb to the dulcet charms and high-vaulting ambition of Samuel Adamson's panoramic survey of London, as viewed in the wake of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which incorporates the sounds of that era to sublime effect? No, it can't have been – looking out across Shakespeare's Globe, I saw the same rapt attention in almost every audience-member I glanced at.
Gabriel leaves you giddy with pleasure and fully smitten with the work of Henry Purcell. Conceived as a means of thrusting the world-class trumpet-playing of Alison Balsom into a theatrical environment, it combines stories, some true, some fictional, in a celebration of baroque music and the fleeting majesty of life. Speech, song and score flow together in one teeming whole that sweeps you along with it.
Directed by Dominic Dromgoole, with Trevor Pinnock acting as musical consultant in order to oversee the 15-piece English Concert orchestra, the show hooks you in from the start, playfully introducing a narrator – Richard Riddell's John – who can step into the action, too, as the Sergeant Trumpeter's son, his prodigious talents only gradually gleaned. He makes way for a panoply of other characters, among them Prince William, Duke of Gloucester (Joshua James), the sickly son of the future Queen Anne; the imperious Queen Mary (Charlotte Mills); the actor Thomas Betterton (Pip Donahy); sundry Thames watermen – led by Sam Cox's name-dropping Francis – and a barge-load of rakes, drinkers and bewigged coxcombs. There are tales of cuckolding, infant death, and a same-sex (female) marriage; a subplot involving Purcell's The Fairy Queen and a grasping impresario is deftly interwoven with a cupid-struck thespian courtship straight out of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
The language is rich and poetic yet the Australian-born Adamson retains a keen ear for the earthy and bawdy, too – and adopts a quizzical, irreverent attitude to the hallowed valveless trumpet: John's rivalrous brother, Bill, derides its value, and is even forced to use it to preserve his modesty after being duped and left stripped by "a Dutch drab".
Yet the exquisite nature of this instrument wins out, with Balsom beautiful to listen to (let alone behold) during faultless renditions of The Plaint from The Fairy Queen and Eternal Source of Light Divine, with Jessie Buckley and William Purefoy the mesmerising soloists in either case. At such moments, the mood rises to so transcendent a strain of melancholy sweetness that I swear you melt, absolutely melt.
Until Aug 18. Tickets: 020 7401 9919; shakespearesglobe.com
Source : http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568414/s/2ee89904/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cculture0Ctheatre0Ctheatre0Ereviews0C10A19170A50CGabriel0EShakespeares0EGlobe0Ereview0Bhtml/story01.htm
