Luther - 2001 production at the NT
Feb 28, 2011 21:07:51 GMT
Post by zenina on Feb 28, 2011 21:07:51 GMT
I'm just trying to pass on some of my impressions of this play which I watched at the NT archives in London. To watch it on a TV screen in a rather bad quality is not the best thing but better than nothing. I also had to change the room while in the middle of the play and had to continue watching in the reading room with other people in it, which was a bit disturbing despite the headphones.
It was certainly not an easy play to watch and the first hour or so, I had a hard time to follow. But after some time it really drew me in and of course thanks to Rufus' passionate performance of the torn Martin Luther. There is one part the constant struggle or quarrel Martin has with his father, who does not forgive him that he wants to become a monk and then the struggle Luther has with the catholic church until he starts to rebel. His constant problem with his bowels, doubling over in pain whenever he defends his new beliefs. Highlights are Luther's speeches from the pulpit, angry and scornful and his confrontation with a Cardinal.
Luther marries and has a son - the scenes at the end when he is carrying around his boy are very sweet and you have the feeling that he finally has found his inner peace.
Here are some reviews:
Luther
Times - 8/10/01 - Jeremy Kingston
...Peter Gill's production is the first to be seen in London since its Royal Court premiere in 1961, and he confidently uses and fills the grim Olivier stage with bold scenic effects. Alison Chitty's design places a great Romanesque doorway at the centre of the rear wall, to which Rufus Sewell's Luther will eventually hammer his thesis against indulgences. Long tables stretch towards us: lines of monks publicly confess: there is ritualised coming and going - and though at last this looks like filling the stage because it's an absurdly big stage that has to be filled, most of the ways in which Gill moves his cast about on it show his flair for visual excitement.
Equally, in the great set pieces that Osborne wrote, for Luther's confrontation with Cardinal Cajetan (Malcolm Sinclair at his suavest) or Tetzel's hard sell for indulgences, this production allows the actors to let the words sing out. Richard Griffith's Tetzel plays the audience like a music-hall star, swerving between cajolery and threat, his face bulging like a zephyr at full blast. Sewell's face is gaunt, haunted by a religious panic that believably grabs hold of itself to become fundamentalist frenzy. His performance is at its most powerful when in the pulpit, shovelling scorn on the craze for relics, but elsewhere too, when brought before superiors, his self-defences have a mellifluous and attractive cogency. Osborne makes much of the sluggish movement of Luther's bowels, his eventual relief mysteriously identified with divine truth...
Telegraph - 8/10/01 - Charles Spencer
...This epic revival in the Olivier is well-timed. After the terrible events of September 11, we are evidently entering a new period of religious wars. And the legacy of Luther, and the Reformation, live on in the continuing anguish of Northern Ireland. Osborne had a mighty, enduring theme here - the horrors committed by man in God's name...
There are flashes of echt Osborne. The spiel of the indulgence seller, Johann Tetzel, played with unforgettably greasy insinuation by Richard Griffiths, comes across as one of Osborne's beloved music hall shticks, while Luther's sermons blaze with the intemperate fire of a God-inspired Jimmy Porter...
Rufus Sewell is a suitably anguished Luther, all charismatic cheekbones and painful belly gripes, and he memorably charts the way in which the character's spiritual despair is transformed into dangerous conviction. There is strong support, too. Malcolm Sinclair is hypnotically subtle and devious as Cajetan, the Cardinal who tries to persuade Luther to recant with a mixture of smarm and menace: Geoffrey Hutchings provides some welcome humour as Luther's irreverent dad, complaining that a wine glass is as empty as a nun's womb: and Timothy West gives a lovely performance of spiritual humility and wisdom, as Luther's confidant, Johann von Staupitz.
Guardian - 8/10/01 - Michael Billington
Here some pics from the NT production page
I managed to make an audio recording of about half of the play - mostly with Rufus' parts. I have to edit it and it'll take some time but if you are interested to hear what he was like I can either post it here or send it via PM.
It was certainly not an easy play to watch and the first hour or so, I had a hard time to follow. But after some time it really drew me in and of course thanks to Rufus' passionate performance of the torn Martin Luther. There is one part the constant struggle or quarrel Martin has with his father, who does not forgive him that he wants to become a monk and then the struggle Luther has with the catholic church until he starts to rebel. His constant problem with his bowels, doubling over in pain whenever he defends his new beliefs. Highlights are Luther's speeches from the pulpit, angry and scornful and his confrontation with a Cardinal.
Luther marries and has a son - the scenes at the end when he is carrying around his boy are very sweet and you have the feeling that he finally has found his inner peace.
Here are some reviews:
Luther
Times - 8/10/01 - Jeremy Kingston
...Peter Gill's production is the first to be seen in London since its Royal Court premiere in 1961, and he confidently uses and fills the grim Olivier stage with bold scenic effects. Alison Chitty's design places a great Romanesque doorway at the centre of the rear wall, to which Rufus Sewell's Luther will eventually hammer his thesis against indulgences. Long tables stretch towards us: lines of monks publicly confess: there is ritualised coming and going - and though at last this looks like filling the stage because it's an absurdly big stage that has to be filled, most of the ways in which Gill moves his cast about on it show his flair for visual excitement.
Equally, in the great set pieces that Osborne wrote, for Luther's confrontation with Cardinal Cajetan (Malcolm Sinclair at his suavest) or Tetzel's hard sell for indulgences, this production allows the actors to let the words sing out. Richard Griffith's Tetzel plays the audience like a music-hall star, swerving between cajolery and threat, his face bulging like a zephyr at full blast. Sewell's face is gaunt, haunted by a religious panic that believably grabs hold of itself to become fundamentalist frenzy. His performance is at its most powerful when in the pulpit, shovelling scorn on the craze for relics, but elsewhere too, when brought before superiors, his self-defences have a mellifluous and attractive cogency. Osborne makes much of the sluggish movement of Luther's bowels, his eventual relief mysteriously identified with divine truth...
Telegraph - 8/10/01 - Charles Spencer
...This epic revival in the Olivier is well-timed. After the terrible events of September 11, we are evidently entering a new period of religious wars. And the legacy of Luther, and the Reformation, live on in the continuing anguish of Northern Ireland. Osborne had a mighty, enduring theme here - the horrors committed by man in God's name...
There are flashes of echt Osborne. The spiel of the indulgence seller, Johann Tetzel, played with unforgettably greasy insinuation by Richard Griffiths, comes across as one of Osborne's beloved music hall shticks, while Luther's sermons blaze with the intemperate fire of a God-inspired Jimmy Porter...
Rufus Sewell is a suitably anguished Luther, all charismatic cheekbones and painful belly gripes, and he memorably charts the way in which the character's spiritual despair is transformed into dangerous conviction. There is strong support, too. Malcolm Sinclair is hypnotically subtle and devious as Cajetan, the Cardinal who tries to persuade Luther to recant with a mixture of smarm and menace: Geoffrey Hutchings provides some welcome humour as Luther's irreverent dad, complaining that a wine glass is as empty as a nun's womb: and Timothy West gives a lovely performance of spiritual humility and wisdom, as Luther's confidant, Johann von Staupitz.
Guardian - 8/10/01 - Michael Billington
Here some pics from the NT production page
I managed to make an audio recording of about half of the play - mostly with Rufus' parts. I have to edit it and it'll take some time but if you are interested to hear what he was like I can either post it here or send it via PM.
