Pictures from an Exhibition **** TNT
Theatre, dance and classical music come together in the Young Vic’s first co-production with Sadler’s Wells – a vividly nightmarish account of the life of Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky who drank himself to death in 1881. His famous piano suite (written in response to the equally premature demise of his close friend, architect and painter Victor Hartmann) forms the musical backdrop to surreal fragments co-choreographed by director Daniel Kramer and performed by red-haired Edward Hogg, seven dancers and an on-stage pianist.
Richard Hudson’s gorgeously lit Alice in Wonderland design flanks the stage with doors of all shapes and sizes – but there’s no escape from the torment inside Modest’s brain as often lurid, sometimes beautiful, scenes chart his troubled progress from nursery to grave, from wealthy childhood to destitute alcoholism. Infants sport giant genitalia made of babies’ feeding bottles, his bohemian drinking companions disappear into the gaping maw of a drinks machine which doles out bottles of vodka and dispenses a pair of dancing bears, a bare-breasted bogey woman haunts his dreams, and epileptic seizures are marked by a discordant score and frantic movement.
It may not stand up to too rigorous analysis, but it’s a brave, fascinating enterprise which blends startling visual images and aural pleasures into a powerfully persuasive, visceral mix.
Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ tube Southwark / Waterloo (0207 922 2922) www.youngvic.org till 23 May (£22.50, under 26’s £10)
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