REVIEW: The Soldier's Tale, The Glasshouse
Toby Jones shines in narrator role
This was a bit special, a riveting performance of a sort of musical parable - a cautionary tale - that I’m sure will be as hard to forget as it is to define.
Was it an opera? Could you call it a concert or a play?
None really fits the bill but it brought together a small company of versatile actors and musicians in whose close proximity it was a privilege and a pleasure to spend an hour.
It was the result of Live Theatre and The Glasshouse joining forces to give what might have been the first performances on Tyneside of Igor Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale for 100 years.
The work’s UK premiere, due to the machinations of Edward Clark, Newcastle-born champion of contemporary classical music, was delivered by the amateurs of the People’s Theatre in 1926.
And if that sounds quirky, it’s in keeping with the nature of the piece.
In The Glasshouse’s intimate Sage Two concert hall, the ‘in the round’ set-up had seven Royal Northern Sinfonia musicians (violin, percussion, clarinet, bassoon, cornet, trombone and double bass) arranged around a small platform.
From there Toby Jones – him off The Detectorists, Mr Bates vs The Post Office and much more – began to relate, script in hand, the tale of the weary, homeward-bound soldier who sells his battered violin to the Devil and lives to regret it.
It might sound a bit of a downer as stories go, but there was a compelling bounce in the telling, partly due to Jeremy Sams’ rhyming text (Swiss writer Charles Ferdinand Ramuz having penned the original) which was putty in the hands of the expertly expressive Mr Jones.
As he propelled the story forward, on came Teesside theatre phenomenon Scott Turnbull as the soldier, marching (prancing more like) around the musicians and saying not a word.
This silent soldier-clown would break stride occasionally for some mischief, gesticulating wildly, applying lipstick or whipping off his shirt to expose a torso tattooed by someone who really should be giving him his money back.
He stopped once to eat a banana. Later, in the guise of the princess which the soldier - always in the Devil’s thrall - is induced to marry, he threw a veil coquettishly over an audience member’s head.
And all the time the musicians, a superbly tight-knit ensemble, were layering on the drama, delivering Stravinsky’s devilish score under the subtle direction of violinist Maria Włoszczowska.
When the soldier was required to play, she held her fiddle aloft.
When an especially eerie atmosphere was called for, they all summoned sounds from their instruments in unconventional ways, blowing or scraping.
The unambiguous moral of the piece – be thankful for what you’ve got – was left hanging at the end, Toby Jones departing his platform amid a flashing, crackling cacophony.
The soldier’s hard-won and ultimately unsatisfying riches cost him everything.
A planned single evening performance of The Soldier’s Tale sold out in a blink so this matinee was added – but that’s it for now, according to Live Theatre’s Jack McNamara who directed (aided by movement specialist Roberta Jean).
Great art is often ephemeral but for those fortunate enough to be at The Glasshouse on Saturday, the memories will live on.
Perhaps there’ll be another North East airing of this curiously compelling piece in 100 years’ time.