(seen at the afternoon preview performance on 22nd February 2025)
It has taken more than a year for this Trevor Nunn directed, Theatre Royal Bath originated play to reach a West End stage. While it is always a fine thing to have Sir Trevor back in town, one wonders if he realises times have changed?
The whole feel of this production is of something presented in the Cottesloe or Barbican Pit back in the 1980s. Oliver Cotton has some talent as a playwright, but these days far more sanding down is done before a play goes into production.
Missing out a judicious editorial phase results in a script careening wildly between “Amadeus,” “Blackadder The Third” and “Carry On Composing.”
Each time wonderful tensions are built up – “the bet” of course, but also demonstrations of Bach’s prodigious memory and musical talent - another superfluous scene deflates the pace. Either we get lengthy plot / background expositions or (and frequently and), the lines within it become far too jarringly contemporary to continue enveloping us in the required period atmosphere.
Robert Jones produces a beige set as worn as Bach is with war. Even the opulence of the palace is subdued, though the costumes stand out well – but “Graun” in brown? Maybe try harder?
Sound designer Sophie Cotton certainly does, launching guerrilla warfare on Jones, and indeed the audience near the interval, with inexplicably lavatorial rainfall sound effects. A few crashes during scene changes also suggest issues.
Nunn simply does what Nunn does best – move the actors around the stage, making sure they not only truly inhabit their characters, but spout the words like they mean them – assuming they can remember them and deliver them. It may be a preview, but it is a late preview, and the levels of fluff would not disgrace a cotton mill during Wakes Week cleaning.
Cox appears tired in the main row of Bach. His final lesson to the King delivered with a weary resignation feeling more than just directed.
As Frederick, Stephen Hagan is very firmly “Blackadder” King George. Same pop-eyed manic delivery, with an injection of Queen Elizabeth I for the psychotic. Delightful, if unoriginal.
Jamie Wilkes as Bach’s son Carl makes the most of being constantly undermined by his storyline. His inexplicable refusal of the bet money, despite family and huge debt. His squawking about being locked in a room (the first we hear of it is way after the event, and it adds nothing). To his credit, Wilkes rises above these plot holes.
There is good supporting work too from Nicole Ansari-Cox as Bach’s wife, drawing a cheer from the audience at her audacious resistance of soldier billeting.
Likewise Juliet Garricks does more with her stereotypical servant Emilia than as written, no doubt the “hand of Nunn” assisting to good effect.
Our melange of court composers and officers, Jamie Wilkes as Carl, Christopher Staines as Quantz, Toby Webster as Graun and Toby Webster as Benda, with Peter De Jersey as Voltaire likewise benefit from a coat of Nunn paint to let each take a moment. We know who they are, and they do it well.
It takes a virtuoso to raise a mediocre (and booby-trapped) piece of music, as Bach demonstrates. Likewise, it takes Trevor Nunn to do the same with a script like this.
That Nunn does so, and creates something which, while never going to be historic nor revived, yet is eminently watchable, proves his skill – making the point that expertise applied to the mediocre can result in at least some form of synchronicity.
