14 FINANCIAL TIMES Friday27 March 2020

ARTS

Kim Rossi Stuart as Dario Maltese

A new series on TV and streamed shows

that are perfect for lockdown

For years our TV catnip wasMontalbano.

My partner is Argentine and although he

has lived in London for decades, he is still

more at home in southern climes, while I

live between London and Venice. So two

hours on BBC4 noodling around Sicily —

that languorous, seaside gourmet para-

dise with amenable mafiosi for kicks —

was a no-brainer on a Friday night.

Until we discoveredMaltese: The Mafia

Detective (on Channel 4’s Walter

Presents video on demand service).

This too is Sicily, but not as we knew it

fromMontalbano. The villains are dead-

lier (when a small child is gunned down

you know they’re not playing for

laughs); the heroes more tortured; the

landscape exhilaratingly strange. Imag-

ineThe Sweeney irected by Antonionid

with a touch of Wong Kar-wai and you

have an idea of this noirishdelizia.

Set in the 1970s, in the Sicilian port

city of Trapani,Malteseis ostensibly a

classic police procedural. Divorced,

depressed cop returning to his home-

town to chase away the baddies? Check.

Adorable small daughter who begs him

to stop risking his neck? Check. Police

chief whose crookedness is over-

telegraphed every time our hero steps

into his office? Check.

But who gives a fig?Maltese s so styl-i

ish it gets away with every one of itsgory

murders. Each of these underlines that

we are in the land of slow TV. Expect to

spend long, breath-held seconds track-

ing the bloodstains to the bathroom in

one episode; watching a corrupt senator

drag himself across a deserted noon-

bright piazza as a lone thug shoots him

again and again in another. Despite the

violence, it’s a pace designed to calm our

21st-century jitters.

Then there’s Trapani. Who knew this

region on the west coast of Sicily was a

cinematographer’s paradise, with its

sun-bleached, stony, flower-cloaked

hills, deserted salt pans and derelict

modernist architecture? Through every

episode, the sea shimmers in and out

like a scene-stealing extra. Of course our

hero is regularly lost in Felliniesque

flashbacks to a beachy teenage love

affair. But what nerve to chuck in a flock

of paddling nuns just to linger on the

image of their faded black habits flap-

ping above the aquamarine waters.

Inland life is just as gorgeous. Much of

Malteseis shot from above, so the city’s

narrow, dusty streets, with their ram-

shackle rooftops and battered Fiats,

become a captivating geometry of

crooked angles and offset lines. So dark

— remember, Sicily is Caravaggio coun-

try — it’s barely visible at times, the chi-

aroscuro creates memorable episodes

such as a gunfight on a stairwell where

only the barrel flashes tells us where the

actors are. Like the protagonists, we

don’t know who has won until the body

count at the end.

Exemplary acting compensates for

the humdrum plotting. It helps that

amid a police station staffed by slouchy

scruffbags, our leading man (played

by Kim Rossi Stuart) has a lean,

long-limbed form that rocks a suit so

nattily I’m thinking of offering all kinds

of favours if my chap is prepared to

put on a tie now and then. Little wonder

they shootRossi Stuart so often from

the back; his coat-hanger-sharp shoul-

ders convey suppressed emotion

more eloquently than most actors’ eyes.

But Commissario Malteseis more

than a pretty face. It’s impossible not to

buy into the character’s dark, vulnera-

ble allure as he segues from unphoto-

genic rage with thestronziwho refuse to

grass on their bosses, to tenderly uncer-

tain passion as he falls in love with Eliza

Ripstein, the town’s newspaper photog-

rapher. Played by German actress Rike

Schmid, Ripstein isat once waifish and

ballsy, while her chemistry with Rossi

Stuart is hotter than Vesuvius.

Eros Pagni, playing the Machiavellian

procurator general, wipes the floor with

everyone. Pagni is a legendary Italian

actorwhose Willie Loman once reduced

me to tears despite the fact that it was in

Italian and I don’t like Arthur Miller.

Here he is impeccably sinister in his

bespoke suits and Hades-deep voice.

Shout-out too to the set designers who

consistently nail 1970s bourgeois Italy

in all its stuffy, mismatched elegance.

Pagni’s vast desk, for example, is sand-

wiched between naff faux-leather chairs

and an antique tapestry that should be

in the Uffizi.

Hats off also to the show’s culinary

ringmaster. Forget the pasta and sea-

food combos that colonisedMontalb-

ano’s menus. This is Sicilian cucina for

grown-ups. Maltese and the deputy

procurator plot over vino and Moroccan

couscous while his daughter meets the

new girlfriend in a restaurant so glitzy

you wonder if our hero’s on the take.

And my vegan anima is still reeling from

the spleen sandwich — yup, oozing

entrails in a panino — the cops snack on

as they walk along the sun-hazed water-

front. Overall, the temptations to start

browsing post-Covid flights to Palermo

are too many to list.

For now, though, we’re on the sofa,

withfizzy water (even Latins can

change their spots). And despite the

lack of a tie I’m grateful to my chap who

puts up with the volume at full blast

because otherwise I can’t understand

the Italian — scattershot, dialect-rich,

snarled from the side of the mouth —

and I’m too proud to read the English

subtitles.Alla prossima.

RachelSpence

channel4.com/programmes/maltese-the-

mafia-detective

Tantalising blend of crime and style

Thriller: Paapa Essiedu,

left, and Ewart James

Walters in the RSC’s

‘Hamlet’. Below: Sheridan

Smith in ‘Funny Girl’

Manuel Harlan; Johan Persson

the mother, Kendra, yet everything else

about the play is overcooked, from the

arrival of a Black Lives Matter-style cell-

phone video of the arrest to a contre-

temps between Kendra and an older

black policeman from other side of the

tracks (“Ain’t no American dream for

us,” he snarls). When accused of racism,

hiswhite colleague splutters, “You’re

really going to go there?”, to which Ken-

dra replies, “We’ve been there for a

while.” It feels like that for us, too, even

after just 90 minutes.

Where Kenny Leon’s Netflix produc-

tion scores is in how it is shot: filmed in a

studio that resembles a stage, with

quick-cut Steadicam and sparing, inci-

sive use of music and brief video flash-

backs,American Son as a taut intimacyh

that rivals the best live shows.

Though the production values come

from another era — literally — the same

applies to an archive performance on

BroadwayHD ($8.99 a month for more

than 300 shows; free trial), Eugene

O’Neill’sA Moon for the Misbegotten

recorded for US TV in the mid-1970s.

Though in blood and bone a stage play,

this chamber piece, focused on the rela-

tionship between a booze-sodden

Broadway actor, Jim Tyrone, and the

Irish countrywoman who may or may

not love him, works superlatively on

screen n this lightly trimmed version.i

Describing the production as legen-

dary undersells it: starring Colleen

Dewhurst and Jason Robards, this

revival of a 1957 production ignited a

frenzy on Broadway in 1973 and is still

cited by misty-eyed O’Neill aficionados.

The video quality iswoozy nd thea

sound cuts out for 15-second intervals,

yet it is an overwhelming experience.

O’Neill based Jim on his dipsomaniac

brother Jamie, and as a depiction of how

alcohol eats people alive it is unsparing.

Robards — who had his owntroubles

with thedrink — seems at first glance a

gentleman of the old school, all florid

gestures and courtly graces, until you

notice that the thespian strut is more of

a stumble (“Water? That’s something

people wash with, isn’t it?” he grunts).

Opposite him as they flirt awkwardly

in the moonlight, Dewhurst is both

maternal and girlish, bright-eyed yet

also grimly sure that happiness will

never reach her. As Robards launches

on a self-lacerating aria about how he

was too drunk to attend his own

mother’s funeral, you see her freeze like

W

ith European countries

in increasingly tight

lockdown and New

York at a standstill,

these are dark times for

theatre in more ways than one.

What to do, if you’re a drama lover

desperate for a fix, or keen to support

the industry in its hour of need? Until

now theatre has lagged behind opera

and dance in making itself available dig-

itally, but even so the past decade has

seen a technological revolution. In addi-

tion to globally popular cinema broad-

casts conducted by the likes of NT Live

(from the National Theatre in London),

various companies have vied to corner

the market in online drama streaming,

both live and as-live.

Let’s divide them into three: specialist

subscription platforms such as Digital

Theatre, BroadwayHD, Marquee TV

and GlobePlayer, which film live stage

productions in the UK and US and make

them available online; back-catalogue

services such as Google Play, which offer

archive TV adaptations of plays and

musicals, some historic; and streaming

giants such as Netflix, which have

dipped a toe into reimagining staged

drama as screen entertainment.

Eager to xperiment, I started withe

Marquee TV (£8.99 a month; £69.

annually for 400+ shows; free trial) and

the RSC’s acclaimed touringHamlet

starring Paapa Essiedu, which I caught

live at London’s Hackney Empire in

2018. Then, I was entranced by
      Essiedu’s electrifying onstage presence;
      encountering him again on a laptop
      plugged into my TV, it’s a relief to find
      that none of that is blunted or blurred.
      Director Simon Godwin sets the pro-
      duction in a contemporarywest Africa
      — the ensemble is largely made up of
      black British actors — with the conceit
      that the Prince has been studying
      abroad, before being dragged back

home by his father’s unexpected death.

For a play that can take its time, at a fleet

three hours this must be one of the least

ponderous versions in recent memory.

The cast is young and the sharp comedy

of Shakespeare’s tragedy glints danger-

ously (it helps that the live audience is

quick to laugh).

This is Essiedu’s show: loping around

like a wildcat testing the bars of his cage,

he flits between sardonic laughter and

frantic grief. He may not have the

dolour of some other Hamlets, but as he

negotiates Shakespeare’s verse he

resembles a young jazz musician

exploring the outer reaches of his

instrument. Not every cast member is

as finely strung — Clarence Smith’s Clau-

dius could have more menace, and

Tanya Moodie’s Gertrude seems under-

powered — but in this version it hardly

seems to matter. Stockpile popcorn

alongside pasta: this isHamletas thriller.

Given the cash it splashes on every-

thing else, Netflix (from £5.99/$8.99 a

month) has shown itself surprisingly

reluctant to collaborate with theatre-

makers. One exception is Christopher

Demos-Brown’s contemporary Ameri-

can dramaAmerican Son, seen on Broad-

way in 2018 and adapted for the plat-

form last year.

We open in a dank downtown police

precinct in South Florida; a mother is

pacing the room, desperate for news of

her missing son. She is black, her son

mixed-race; the dim-witted officer han-

dling the caseis white. Radios crackle

with news of a traffic stop; have shots

been fired?

If you think you know where all this is

going, don’t bother to look away now:

you do. Though Demos-Brown’s script is

meticulously crafted, it’s so freighted

with baggage it is a wonder it made

it through the stage door, never mind

on to a streaming platform. Kerry

Washington is gut-wrenchingly sad as

Where to find

drama in a crisis

stone. When he finally subsides into her

lap, the scene resembles — in José Quin-

tero’s staging — a Renaissance Pietà.

After all that, particularly if you’re

self-isolating, you might be in need of a

pick-me-up — perhaps something

alcohol-free? Why not reach forFunny

Girl Digital Theatre, £9.99 a month, or(

£7.99 for individual productions), a

2018 recording of Sheridan Smith’s turn

as musical star Fanny Brice?

Originally staged at London’s pocket-

sized Menier Chocolate Factory in

2015, the show wonfine reviewsbefore

Smith pulled out after suffering per-

sonal issues. Returning to it two years

later, she finds a disconcerting amount

of pathos in a comedy that could

seem bantamweight.

Relating the real-life adventures of an

early 20th-century Brooklyn hoofer

who became Broadway’s biggest star,

the piece is effervescently staged in a

somewhat metatheatrical production

by Michael Mayer — all stylised foot-

lights and backcloths painted like the

razziest of Victorian auditoriums. It also

moves along at a nice clip, especially

when it comes to the musical numbers

(“If a Girl isn’t Pretty”, “People”).

It’s whenever Smith appears that

thingsreally perk up: brassy and ebul-

lient, broadcasting mischievous grins,

she resembles the kind of bath toy that

is forever bobbing to the surface. When

she first catches sight of Nick, the man

who will become her lover — a smooth-

as-satin Darius Campbell — her voice

drops at least seven octaves: “gooooooor-

geous”. And when it comes to the reprise

of“Don’t Rain on My Parade” (“I’m

gonna live and live now / Get what I

want, I know how”), Smith sings as if not

just her career, but her life,hangs in the

balance. An anthem for our times.

Theatres and streaming services are making classic stage

productions available digitally. By Andrew Dickson

BingeWatch

Gut-wrenching:

from left, Kerry

Washington,

Steven Pasquale

and Jeremy

Jordan

in ‘American

Son’

As Hamlet, Paapa

Essiedu resembles a

young jazz musician

exploring the outer

reaches of his instrument

MARCH 27 2020 Section:Features Time: 3/202026/ - 17:58 User: david.cheal Page Name:ARTS LON, Part,Page,Edition:EUR , 14, 1