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A scene from The Last Days of Gilda |
Tales from dark heart of tropicsBRAZIL X2
Old red lion
FROM a neurotic white-collar bank clerk to an insouciant favela-dwelling whore, these two short plays display the breadth and depth of Brazilian society.
The Assault, Jose Vicente’s semi-autobiographical study of existential despair set against the backdrop of Brazilian modernism in the late 1960s, gets a timely and quintessentially English re-working.
The clipped English of the obsessive clerk Victor contrasts with the cockney patter of the lowly cleaner and the object of his desires, Hugo; mirroring the social and economic power struggle at the heart of this dark and absorbing piece.
Realising the absurdity of his mundane job and the relentless mechanical routine of his life, Steven Farar as Victor achieves the unsettling balance of shy awkwardness and predatory intent as he engineers his seduction of the unwitting cleaner. Obsessive and introverted at times, charming and verbose at others, his ramblings at his simple hostage reveal his loneliness, frustration and self-pity, that snap from Beckett-like humour into sudden explosions of rage.
Jade Willis as his reticent but not so naïve victim proves a believable foil and worthy adversary to his advances. The power struggle, complicated by their professional, social and sexual relationship, is both teeth-achingly uncomfortable yet wholly compelling.
Following on from its acclaimed run at the Arcola earlier this year, The Last Days of Gilda with its bright, tropical soundtrack and colourful set design, drops us in the hot slums of Rio and at the door of the charming, more than welcoming Gilda. Despised by the neighbourhood wives whose husbands she indiscriminately beds and adored by the local boys who she lets watch her shower, she lives alone with nothing for company save a few pigs and chickens, a constantly rotating wardrobe of clothes and an old radio.
With personality and wit that masks her at times hazy delivery, Gael Le Cornec manages to be captivating and personable while masking the deep pain and loneliness of her character when her suitors no longer call.
These are beautifully worked vignettes of disparate lives joined, despite very different circumstances, by the same position of isolation.
Until September 5
020 7837 7816 |
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