Review: Red Velvet at The Garrick Theatre
IT IS easy to see why Kenneth Branagh chose Lolita Chakrabarti’s play for his company’s season here.
The story of the first black actor to appear onstage at Covent Garden is a play about theatre
The story of the first black actor to appear onstage at Covent Garden is a play about theatre and acting. Ira Aldridge was brought from America to replace the legendary Edmund Kean who had collapsed on stage playing Othello in 1833.
Chakrabarti has a lot right. The cast’s initial reaction to Aldridge (Adrian Lester) goes from the guarded curiosity of his ageing Desdemona, Ellen Tree (Charlotte Lucas), to the outright contempt of Kean’s son Charles (Mark Edel-Hunt) who assumed he would take over his father’s role.
It is easy to see why Kenneth Branagh chose Lolita Chakrabarti’s play for his company’s season here
But Chakrabarti, Lester’s wife, overplays her hand in the first half. Showing Aldridge in a new style of naturalistic performance at odds with the grand, operatic gestures of the English Old School. In-jokes about acting and modern anachronisms are distracting.
The second half is far better, with a steely focus on issues debated brilliantly by Aldridge and his French producer Pierre Laporte (Emun Elliott) though the analogy with women's rights seems tacked on. Lester is fantastic as is the fine cast. A good play with a surfeit of right on-ness.
RED VELVET at The Garrick Theatre, until February 27. Tickets: 0330 333 4811; branaghtheatre.com/red-velvet.
You can now book your theatre and concert tickets online at expresstheatretickets.co.uk.
NEIL NORMAN@NJStreitberger