The Stage

Satyagraha

Published Friday 26 February 2010 at 12:25 by David Gutman

How to handle Philip Glass’s inscrutable minimalist monument? In their un-surtitled ENO production of 1997, revived now by David Kneuss with many original cast members, Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch go their own way - up to a point. Even for this theatrical director-designer partnership in this totemic venue, Satyagraha plays in Sanskrit. The libretto, derived by Constance de Jong from the Bhagavada Gita, is plundered for key phrases which are projected, sporadically, in English across the semicircular, corrugated, wall-like set.

A scene from Satyagraha at the Coliseum Photo: Alastair Muir/ENO

Evoking Mahatma Gandhi’s early years in South Africa and his spiritual progress towards satyagraha (resistance to oppression by non-violent means), we have a series of tableaux vivants which eschew linearity and politics in favour of contemplative abstraction. Historical icons - admired (Tolstoy, Tagore) or admiring (Martin Luther King) - are discreetly referenced upstage while Improbable’s brilliant troupe of physical actors, puppeteers and illusionists set about the creation of mythological beasts (Hindu gods?) from papier-mache and thin air. Kevin Pollard’s costumes, surprisingly in period, and Paule Constable’s lighting contribute their own magic.

Act 2 brings the biggest blast of energy. Molested on the streets of Durban, Alan Oke’s poignant Gandhi is protected by redoubtable Mrs Alexander in a new and feisty impersonation by Anne Mason. And in the next scene’s pseudo-quintet, Elena Xanthoudakis’ Miss Schlesen and Janis Kelly’s Mrs Naidoo prove impervious to strain. The difficulty is that the young activist whose beliefs will change the course of history is ultimately rendered as a figure of lonely inaction. His Act 3 soliloquy, musically all scales, is dramatically comatose. Still, the audience seems prepared to make the required leap of faith. For the most part, conductor Stuart Stratford secures amazingly precise work, given the stupefyingly repetitive nature of the score.