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FIRST NIGHT | THEATRE

Dmitry review — dynastic ding-dong that befuddles then bewitches

Marylebone Theatre, NW1
Dmitry
Tom Byrne, Ammar Haj Ahmad and Aurora Dawson-Hunte
ELLLIE KURTZ

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★★★☆☆
If it weren’t bold enough to open a new 200-seat venue in central London, how about launching with an epic drama based on an unfinished play by Friedrich Schiller? With a sumptuously costumed cast of 16 playing 25 characters in an account of the true story of the young tsar of disputed origin who deposed Boris Godunov in 1605? An unabashedly high-theatrical style that at first makes you clutch your seat in fear that you’ll never follow all the Russian and Polish names, all the politicking, all the history? A dynastic ding-dong: House of the Dragon with no dragons.

Not to worry, theatregoer. This new adaptation by Peter Oswald may start out befuddling, but it ends up bewitching. Oswald was writer-in-residence during Mark Rylance’s tenure at Shakespeare’s Globe, and had West End success in the 2000s with two full-blown, more tightly focused Schillers, Don Carlos and Mary Stuart. Could he, his dramaturge (the new theatre’s artistic director) Alexander J Gifford and their director Tim Supple have dialled down more of the detail as they turned two acts and copious notes into a finished drama more than 200 years later? Perhaps so. Yet the longer Dmitry goes on the more gripping and resonant it becomes. Characters that start out as mere political chess pieces become compellingly conflicted. And Supple’s staging on Robert Innes Hopkins’s wood-panelled set becomes memorably elegant and atmospheric.

The supporting cast is uneven, but there are fine performances here. Tom Byrne has the deceptively easy strength of purpose of a young Hugh Laurie as Dmitry, believed by his Polish backers to be the son of Ivan and rightful tsar of Russia. James Garnon is the papal envoy with killer instincts who backs him, alongside Mark Hadfield’s Polish prince. The best performances make this chewy material come to roaring life: Daniel York Loh is a lusty Godunov, and Poppy Miller excels as Maria, the former tsarina torn between supporting and denouncing the supposed son who might bring her nation stability.

And as the protagonists tie themselves in blood-spattered knots in pursuit of influence, legitimacy, someone to believe in or a sense of Russia’s self-determination, the personal pertinence becomes contemporary and political as Daniel Hawksford’s Romanov general vows that Russia will never again be the plaything of outside forces. All this and dramatic lighting, by Jackie Shemesh, plus sound design by Max Pappenheim that gives us galvanising blasts of hard rock in the first half that give way to contemplative choral music in the second. It’s Big Theatre: not flawless, but admirably ambitious, mountingly involving and rewarding.
To November 5, marylebonetheatre.com

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