This review has been taken from my NSDF blog, written for the Peter de Haan Charitable Trust.
Sarah Kane's Phaedra's Love performed at NSDF by the University of Leeds' Ravenrock Theatre Company is marketed as a comedy for the severely depressed, this paraphrased from the suicidal playwright's letters, and is relayed to the audience from the perspective of another manic jester - the misogynistic Hippolytus. This decision by director Ashley Scott Layton is one of the strengths of this widely liked show and serves to highlight what could otherwise have been a preachy and droll play. The director's well prepared insight into the work is aided in its performance by a central cast who give some of the performances of the festival. In small, two-hander scenes Rupert Lazarus' Hippolytus entertains and disgusts in equal measure whilst Phaedra (Rachel Helen Shaw) lays herself bare, at points literally, in front of this monster of manhood. The overt sexuality of the piece is dealt out with a clever mix of the explicit and the cloaked, again Shaw's Phaedra excelling. It is after her suicide that the play loses some of this visceral appeal and although justified by the director as a further decent into Hippolytus' madness, the shift to operatic style funeral and ensemble mob scene with cardboard set and props never recaptures this special connection with the audience. The live band played very well and Louise Roberts sang beautifully, yet too many songs were thrown in and their half-used motif with Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart was not fully realised. A show filled with strong principals and although he scores more hits, director Ashley Scott Layton does score some misses.
Phaedra's Love: ****
Image courtesy of Noisesoffmagazine.blogspot.
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