A diva with no drama
T★★✩✩✩
O DRAMATISE the formidable life of dancer and impresario Ida Rubinstein Naomi Sorkin has conscripted a team of ardent Rubinstein admirers. And there is a lot to admire.
Although her reputation faded even before her death in 1960, at the height of Rubinstein’s career the Russian-born Jewish performer was as celebrated as Isadora Duncan, performed with Diaghilev and was declared by the renowned actor Sarah Bernhardt, a worthy successor. Rubinstein also formed her own dance company for which she commissioned Ravel to write Bolero.
Her off-stage life was no less colourful. Lovers included American painter Romaine Brooks, the British politician Walter Guinness (who was killed by the Stern Gang in Egypt in 1944) and the Italian writer Gabriele D’Annunzio who according to this show was part of a love triangle with Brooks.
So to guide Sorkin’s own title role performance in this biographical play she engaged director Christian Holder, a fellow former principle ballet dancer who shares “profound points of reference” in the world of ballet. Even designer David Roger has long been “smitten with all things Ida”. Yet for all everyone’s commitment to the noble cause of reviving Rubinstein’s reputation no one it seems has thought to get hold of a dramatist.
The show’s script is based on a “scenario” by members of a Russian theatre group who Sorkin, perhaps not unreasonably, were well placed to do her heroine justice.
The play is set in Rubinstein’s French villa where she spent the final act of her life. Enter British journalist (Max Wilson) who has arrived to interview Rubinstein about her life. The conversation triggers a series of flashbacks conveying the major milestones in a life that has no doubt been well lived.
Yet it is difficult to think of a more contrived framing device for a biographical drama than the interview conducted by a journalist interested in hagiography. This writer is a committed admirer who promises — volunteers even — to only publish what his subject agrees to. If I were his editor I’d have sacked him n the spot.
But the real problem with this “scenario” is that events can only be skated over. Much better to establish a period in the life of the subject that reveals something essential rather than to include all the facts that would appear in a biography.
Tony Kushner’s screenplay for the movie (Abraham) Lincoln for instance conveyed the character of the man by focusing on just the four months he worked to abolish slavery. By contrast this diligent show generates almost no dramatic tension in its attempt to represent a life that spanned two world wars.
Still, the evening has its moments. Musician Darren Berry as Ravel conjures the percussive strains of Bolero on the piano’s keyboard with an immensely cultured left hand. Meanwhile, Sorkin’s Rubinstein is striking and charismatic. But you leave with the sense that Rubinstein was as melodramatic off stage as she was on.
The most compelling portrait here is the one by Brooks projected onto the set. It is a superb paining as are the Brooks paintings of Rubinstein in the programme. They reveal a diva with stunning theatricality, which this show sadly lacks.
It is difficult to think of a more contrived framing device than the interview conducted by a journalist