Inside Wagner’s Head, Linbury Studio - theatre review
No composer has inspired more inaccurate, stereotypical reactions than Wagner, and it is the triumph of Simon Callow’s one-man show Inside Wagner’s Head that he is able to illumine both the man and the work in all their bewildering complexity. Without attempting to conceal Wagner’s less savoury characteristics — the self-centredness and virulent anti-Semitism among them — he shows how such psychological flaws are actually integral to the Wagner phenomenon.
Reminding us that Wagner flaunted his Saxon dialect even when consorting with kings, Callow adopts an accent reminiscent of a Yorkshire pig-farmer when entering Wagner’s character. The effect is shocking but salutary: earthy roots and coarse humour were part of the package.
Callow, who has written his own script, has done his homework: this witty, chronological, impassioned romp through Wagner’s life and career is impressively accurate, with just a handful of incidents where poetic licence reigns over historical fact. It’s not, for example, true that Hans von Bülow was ignorant of his wife Cosima’s affair with Wagner while conducting the premiere of Tristan in 1865. Nor is it likely that the interruption of work on the Ring in 1857 was caused by the discovery of Schopenhauer, when the two events were three years apart; more probably it was the perceived need for a marketable success.
But time and again Callow pithily hits the mark: on the notorious anti-Semitism; on the fundamental principle of art at the centre of society; and on the interplay of “the sublime and the grotesque”, the “monstrous contradictions”, in art as in life.
Props are imaginatively used — the stage resembles a curiosity shop — as are visuals, sound and lighting (director: Simon Stokes). The mix of passion and exasperation makes Callow’s portrait both highly engaging and rewarding.
Until Sept 28 (020 7304 4000, roh.org.uk/deloitteignite)
