Farinelli and the King

[foxy]

This show looks like it could be very good. Starring the brilliant Mark Rylance.

 

http://farinelliandthekingbroadway.com/

[+ Avalon]

Here is info about Farinelli

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farinelli

 

He was castrated at age 12

[foxy]

The good old days. What they did for art.

[+ beethoven]

I have tickets for this, purchased as soon as it was announced. I'd pay to hear Mark Rylance read the phone book!

[foxy]

I’ll be buying my ticket on Saturday. I’m tempted by onstage seating. Wondering if anyone has experienced this? I did standing room for Twelfth Night and wished I had booked a seat ahead. Any seat. But it was worth it. Seeing a play by candlelight was so lovely.

[foxy]

For those interested tickets are selling fast and possibly sold out. I wound up in the first row sitting on a bench. There was only one other choice and it was far away. So no back rest for 2 1/2 hours. Luckily there's an intermission. Should be a wonderful performance.

[foxy]

I had the great pleasure in seeing Farinelli and The King today. It’s playing at the beautiful Belasco Theater which blends perfectly with the gorgeous set onstage. The play is lit by candles from 6 chandeliers and sconces scattered around the stage. There’s audience seating on the stage on two levels in boxes. I was fortunate to get a front row orchestra seat in the center on a padded bench. So I was about 8 feet from the edge of the stage and quite close to the actors who often descended steps and addressed the audience. Normally such closeness might seem uncomfortable but not so in today’s production. As you enter the theater musicians in period costume are playing period instruments. There’s also an orchestra in a gallery above the stage. Actors move about the audience chatting you up and it makes for an intimate and cozy mood. By the time Mark Rylance makes his appearance you are ready for a good time. The play is actually quite funny and Rylance as King Philippe V of Spain gives his usual brilliant performance. He’s one of those actors that truly makes you feel he loves performing. It’s more like he’s performing with you and not at you. He makes you feel engaged in the best way. I was especially taken with Sam Crane who portrays Farinelli. However when it comes time for the actual singing one of two countertenors steps in. Iestyn Davis or James Hill. While happily neither man is an actual castrato their singing does give you some idea of what the singing was like. Once you relax into a man singing in a high voice you can begin to understand the beauty. It’s a wonderful theatrical experience which I’d recommend highly if you can get a ticket. I think they may be hard to come by. It runs until March 25.

Edited December 14, 2017 by foxy

[edjames]

As expected, Ben loved it...

 

Review: Mark Rylance Returns to Broadway as a Mad Monarch to Cherish

FARINELLI AND THE KING

• Closing Date: March 25, 2018
  
• Belasco Theater, 111 W. 44th St.
  

By BEN BRANTLEY DEC. 17, 2017

 

Mark Rylance, left, as Philippe V, and Melody Grove as Isabella Farnese in “Farinelli and the King” at the Belasco Theater. CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

His Majesty is not himself today. His most unserene highness, the King of Spain, does not know who or what he is, except that he’s not where he belongs. Approach him with caution: He bites. And allow me, if you will, to advise you never to take your eyes off him.

 

Not that you’ll want to.

 

As was observed of another stark raving royal (named Hamlet), “Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.” This is especially true when a great one is portrayed by one of the greatest actors on the planet.

 

Uncork the Champagne and unfurl the straitjacket. Mark Rylance is once again ruling audiences at the Belasco Theater, where the strangely enchanting “Farinelli and the King,” Claire van Kampen’s shimmering fairy tale for grown-ups, opened on Sunday night.

 

Mr. Rylance, a three-time Tony winner (and an Oscar and Olivier Award winner) was last seen at the Belasco four years ago, during the triumphant residency of the London-based Shakespeare’s Globe. At that time, he alternated in the roles of the uncertain Countess Olivia (in “Twelfth Night”), for whom falling in love becomes an existential crisis, and the demonically assured title character of “Richard III.”

 

In “Farinelli and the King,” also a Globe production, he occupies a poignant middle ground between those two Shakespearean archetypes, as a troubled soul who shifts between lyric melancholia and splenetic rage. That’s Philippe V of Spain, an early-18th-century monarch whose mental health was of great concern to an already unsteady Europe.

 

His Majesty is not himself today. His most unserene highness, the King of Spain, does not know who or what he is, except that he’s not where he belongs. Approach him with caution: He bites. And allow me, if you will, to advise you never to take your eyes off him.

 

Not that you’ll want to.

 

As was observed of another stark raving royal (named Hamlet), “Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.” This is especially true when a great one is portrayed by one of the greatest actors on the planet.

 

Uncork the Champagne and unfurl the straitjacket. Mark Rylance is once again ruling audiences at the Belasco Theater, where the strangely enchanting “Farinelli and the King,” Claire van Kampen’s shimmering fairy tale for grown-ups, opened on Sunday night.

 

Mr. Rylance, a three-time Tony winner (and an Oscar and Olivier Award winner) was last seen at the Belasco four years ago, during the triumphant residency of the London-based Shakespeare’s Globe. At that time, he alternated in the roles of the uncertain Countess Olivia (in “Twelfth Night”), for whom falling in love becomes an existential crisis, and the demonically assured title character of “Richard III.”

 

In “Farinelli and the King,” also a Globe production, he occupies a poignant middle ground between those two Shakespearean archetypes, as a troubled soul who shifts between lyric melancholia and splenetic rage. That’s Philippe V of Spain, an early-18th-century monarch whose mental health was of great concern to an already unsteady Europe.

 

At this point, you may think the last person you want to spend time with is a crazy, capricious head of state with the power to wage cataclysmic war. But fear not. You are far more likely to see yourself in this sad King, who worries that he is an impostor of the highest order, than any resemblance to a certain contemporary world leader.

 

What’s more, unlike the current resident of the White House, Philippe comes to see art as a healing and redemptive force. And with art given sublime voice here by the British countertenor Iestyn Davies, you are unlikely to argue with the King’s belief in its holy transcendence.

 

Mr. Davies does not portray the celebrated countertenor of the play’s title, who is recruited to soothe the King’s savage breast. Or not exactly. Yes, he appears on stage in full 18th-century costume but only to sing (blissfully) arias by Handel.

 

Farinelli, the young Italian opera star who was castrated at the age of 10 by his musician brother, is affectingly embodied by another, identically dressed actor, Sam Crane. This unconfident man does not feel he produces, much less owns, the exquisite notes that come out of him.

 

That voice, which has made a freak as well as an idol of Farinelli, is somehow something apart. His famous self is its own autonomous being. Such a fission between person and persona is a divide with which Philippe can well identify.

Or as the King says to his loving and sorely tried wife, Isabella (a warm and centered Melody Grove), “Everything produced in this world has its shadow even at the beginning; when we are taken from the safety of the dark then are we no longer wholly ourselves; we have been claimed by others.”

 

That’s quite a mouthful, even for an un-self-edited monarch. I didn’t entirely absorb that speech’s implications about the nature of celebrity and identity when I first heard it.

 

Ms. van Kampen, a composer and the founding director of theater music at Shakespeare’s Globe, is not by nature a playwright. The language of her script, which combines Shakespearean pastiche with Pirandellian philosophizing and latter-day jokiness, doesn’t always flow melodically.

 

But Ms. van Kampen has an illuminating appreciation not only for period music but also for the gap between artists and their art, and what separates the nimbus of fame from those who are enhaloed by it. (She is married to Mr. Rylance, so she should know.)

 

The physical production — directed by John Dove and designed by Jonathan Fensom — provides the ideal frame for such contemplation. The Belasco has been reimagined as a courtly theater with onstage seating for audience members, blurring the distinction between public and private performance. (That distinction will be further — and most charmingly — erased at the beginning of the second act.)

• 
  Mr. Rylance, center, a three-time Tony winner, was last seen at the theater four years ago, during the triumphant residency of the London-based Shakespeare’s Globe. CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times
  This world is illuminated by the glow of candles, real and extrapolated (by the lighting designer Paul Russell), and a feeling of twilight reverie pervades every scene. The music that emanates from the onstage ensemble, performing on period instruments, matches the sense of a distant age burnished by memory. The look is “once upon a time” incarnate.
   
  When we first meet our storybook King, he is in bed, fishing in a goldfish bowl. As he converses — and, implicitly, identifies with — the confined creature in the bowl, he seems to belong to the species of charming lunatics who populate the whimsical works of French dramatists like Anouilh and Giraudoux.
   
  But the pain and anger beneath make this man a danger, even to those he loves. Philippe, the grandson of the grandest king of all, France’s Louis XIV, believes everyone is plotting to usurp him. (He’s not entirely wrong.) Those he suspects include his chief minister (Edward Peel, looking like a Hogarth caricature of a desiccated politician); the royal doctor (Huss Garbiya) and even the steadfast Isabella.
   
  It is she who introduces Farinelli, who is managed by a hapless English entrepreneur (Colin Hurley, in a classic comic man-of-the-theater turn), into the court. The King is not initially smitten by this human novelty. And then Farinelli sings.
   
  Isabella spoke earlier of being transported by the sound of that voice, and Mr. Davies, improbably, matches her account. That is crucial to our acceptance of the transformation the king will undergo. So is the sight of Mr. Rylance listening to Mr. Davies sing — “as if he is leaning in,” Farinelli marvels later, “to hear it more particularly.”
   
  In the paradoxically plaintive and joyous sound of a castrato’s voice channeling Handel’s music, the King has glimpsed a paradise beyond his fractious court and his burdened royal self. Trying to create that idyllic vision in the real world, in a rustic outpost in the forest in the second act, is an experiment doomed to failure.
   
  But watching Mr. Rylance’s Philippe experience Farinelli’s voice, we hear what he hears. And an actor and a singer temporarily turn a night at the theater in an anxious city into an Eden beyond worldly care, all the more precious for its evanescenc
  

[+ WilliamM]

At this point, it's fair to post a review by Jesse, not an official reviewer at All That Chat. Jesse has been posting reviews for years, always on his own. He provides a different point of view. I paid close attention to his comments about Act 2, and decided to skip the play.

 

My review of FARINELLI AND THE KING: Mark Rylance returns to Broadway after a four-year absence

Posted by: jesse21 01:12 pm EST 12/17/17

-

 

 

 

Mark Rylance is talking to his pet goldfish as Farinelli and the King begins. You see, he is playing the bipolar 18th-century Spanish King Philippe V which allows him to turn his emotional state on a dime from infant to sage, from stutter to eloquence, from ebullience to paranoia, from whimsy to fury.

 

This role is tailor-made for Mr. Rylance’s talents, literally that is, because it was written for him by his wife, composer Claire van Kampen. And, yes, he pulls out all the stops which might be pleasure enough if all you are looking for is to see a great actor exercise his muscles. In that respect, Mr. Rylance certainly does not disappoint.

 

Then there’s the play itself. I think a great many theatergoers have been eagerly awaiting Farinelli and the King, which opens tonight on Broadway, because of the memorable productions of Twelfth Night and Richard III that Mr. Rylance and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London also brought to the same Belasco Theatre in late 2013. Like those, Farinelli is lit by candlelight, has no sound amplification, features richly-textured period costumes and is performed on a simply decorated stage with a gallery for musicians playing on baroque instruments and with on-stage seating for some of the audience.

 

But, like Hamlet says, “The play’s the thing.” There is an enormous gulf between Shakespeare’s plays in the Globe’s last Broadway visit and Ms. van Kampen’s first-time effort at playwriting.

 

She has penned a story which is grounded in historical accuracy. The queen, Philippe’s second wife, Isabella Farnese (an excellent Melody Grove), travels to London in 1737 to engage Farinelli, the celebrated castrato, to sing exclusively for her husband, believing that his beautiful voice would restore Philippe’s health. In fact, the therapeutic power of music has been scientifically proven and is used today in treatments such as autism. Farinelli, by the way, stayed at the Spanish court until 1759 and never sang in public again.

 

The play has two interesting aspects. One is a premise in the writing. Philippe and Farinelli form a kinship because both were robbed of their youth. The Italian singer, born as Carlo Broschi, was castrated by his brother at age 10 to preserve his beautiful voice. The French-born Philippe, who ruled for almost 46 years, was the grandson of King Louis XIV and was placed on the Spanish somewhat unhappily at age 17. Another conceit of commonality, which is forced, is that Farinelli and Mr. Rylance, the actor not the character, share similarly rich vocal powers: the former in singing and the latter in speech.

 

The other, and more interesting aspect, is the casting of two people, dressed and wigged identically, to portray Farinelli. Sam Crane acts the character while the countertenor Iestyn Davies sings Farinelli. He sings well enough, the highlight being Handel's moving “Lascia ch'io pianga” from Rinaldo at the end. Yet, I felt the balance was off because Mr. Rylance is a superstar-calibre actor and Mr. Davies is merely very good (or perhaps only just that on the night I heard him). You’d need a Luciano Pavarotti to balance Mark Rylance.

 

So the merits of Farinelli and the King are in the notion of bifurcating the role of Farinelli; the efficient staging by director John Dove; the design (set and costumes by Jonathan Fensom; lighting by Paul Russell); the live music played by seven musicians; and the generally good acting. The villain, by the way, is played well by Edward Peel as the King’s chief minister who plots for an abdication.

 

The downside is that Ms. van Kampen has little to say about music’s ability to heal other than allowing Mr. Davies to repeatedly attempt to illustrate the point. The plot is interesting in the first act. After intermission, the scene shifts to the countryside where Philippe brings Isabella and Farinelli to live the simple close-to-nature country life. That half of the play is not very interesting, a let-down akin to a musical with second-act troubles. The playwright peppers her script with contemporary anachronisms, most often for comic relief, and some Shakespearean quotations. With few ideas beyond the basic premise, these seem like gimmicks.

 

One could make the case that buying a ticket to watch Mark Rylance offers satisfaction enough. But sitting through Act II soured me on even that thought.

 

 

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Edited December 18, 2017 by WilliamM

[foxy]

That’s too bad because I think you’d really enjoy this production. It’s not like anything else you’ll find on Broadway.

[+ WilliamM]

That’s too bad because I think you’d really enjoy this production. It’s not like anything else you’ll find on Broadway.

 

 

My third Broadway show was Merman in "Gypsy" when I was seventeen years old. To be fair, @foxy, I am sure to greatly enjoy Rylance. But the play is likely not as memorable as the musical "Gypsy." I agree that Merman and Rylance are historic theater figures.

 

Also, I live in Philadelphia, not New York.

Edited December 22, 2017 by WilliamM

[+ Seaninsf]

So excited to see Farinelli in a few weeks. Rylance is a genius. I first saw him in Jerusalem years ago and subsequently in Twelfth Night. He is always amazing and I think chooses interesting projects.

[+ beethoven]

I saw "Farinelli and the King" today and loved it. It's a marvelous piece of theater, brilliantly acted and staged. I can understand the negative comments about Act Two, in the second review posted here, but I would never even suggest that one not see the play because of its shortcomings -- which didn't affect my enjoyment of the play. I have a friend who didn't like it because "it was a dozen good actors in search of a decent play." Nonsense! If he was expecting Arthur Miller, he should have stayed home.

I think that anyone interested in good theater should see this.

[edjames]

Sorry guys, I was disappointed. There were wonderful performances (Rylance, great) and singers, however, by Act 2 I was a bit bored. I think part of my problem is my historical confusion about this king of Spain and one of his predecessors. Shame on me, I should have googled them before the show. I got a GREAT center orch seat on TDF, so given the deeply discounted price, in the end it was worth it to this production. Give Mr Rylance another Tony?