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The Review - THEATRE by HOWARD LOXTON
Published: 26 November 2009

Henry Goodman as Degas in The Line

A portrait of Degas and teenage muse

THE LINE
Arcola Theatre

SUZANNE Valadon, illegitimate daughter of a drunken cleaner, started work as a circus acrobat aged 15.
She fell from a trapeze ending that career and, still only 16, found work as an artist’s model.
She had been good at drawing from childhood and as Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec painted her she watched and learned from them. She was told to show her work to Edgar Degas – and that is where Timberlake Wertenbaker’s new play begins, in 1888 when Suzanne is 22 and already has a four-year-old son.
Having abandoned painting for drawing and etching, he is enraptured by her talent. “How,” he asks, “did you learn to draw a line that is so ferocious and so supple?” The play follows the relationship between the spirited young woman flitting from affair to affair, and the well-heeled celibate painter who tells her: “I locked my heart up in pink ballet shoes.”
Henry Goodman as Degas gives us a man obsessed with art at the expense of life, but beneath the bigoted patriot (one of the few references to contemporary life is his reaction to the Dreyfus affair) and the bullying mentor he also shows us a suppressed warmth and gentleness, a man who wonders: “How did I lose joy?”
Suzanne is driven to paint and draw but she is not going to let it interfere with life. Susan Smart captures that impulsive vitality and a streak of petulant obstinacy.
Housekeeper Zoë does not feature in art history, there is not even a painting of her, only a portrait of her crotchety face – a photograph that we see taken, but she plays an important role in this trio. At first Selina Cadell shows us only her orderly efficiency but we soon see the strength of her devotion to Degas and the warmth she feels for Suzanne in a subtle performance that provides the most touching moment of the play.
Wertenbaker introduces us to a woman who is little known in Britain, provides us with brief lessons in drawing and etching and sets up an opposition between the demands of life and art. William Dudley’s setting surrounds the audience with paintings by both the artists as well as easels and painting paraphernalia, but it presents us with opposite attitudes rather than engaging in discussion. It holds our interest through its presentation of the characters and the performances of the actors.
Until December 12
020 7503 1646

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