6 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES Thursday5 March 2020

ARTS

Doug

Letheren

in Crystal

Pite’s

‘Revisor’

Michael Slobodian

Louise Levene

Mostchoreographersareresignedtothe

fact that the best dance narratives could

be told in a tweet, but Crystal Pite tack-

les more complex stories and has

devised a radical solution: speech. Her

latest piece,Revisor, is based on Gogol’s

1836 playThe Government Inspector, in

which a passing stranger is mistaken for

a senior civil servant by the corrupt offi-

cialsofasmalltown.

Jonathon Young’s free adaptation

becomespartofthesoundtrack,andthe

eight dancers lip-sync to the dialogue,

fitting their moves to the vocal rhythms

of the actors — the same technique was

used in the shattering, Olivier Award-

winningBetroffenheit. The result is a

witty, intelligent and utterly absorbing

pieceofdancetheatre.

Mysterious strangers seldom bode

wellforagroupwithadarksecret—beit

an inspector calling or a high plains

drifter — and political corruption is

nothing to laugh at, but Gogol’s play has

almost invariably been staged as farce.

Pite and Young’s deconstruction has fun

with the play’s absurdist elements, but

they are keen to emphasise its darker

side—anditscontemporaryresonance.

Jay Gower Taylor’s set is part-

furnishedwith19th-centurybric-a-brac

and backed by a magical installation of

wormy white lights that scribble across

the backcloth like the aftertraces of a

firework waved in the dark. The sound

design combines Owen Belton’s atmos-

pheric music with voice recordings that

deteriorate into a rhythmic gargle of

repeated phrases. There is a calm,

Alexa-like voiceover from Meg Roe who

intones the stage directions and gives a

sketchofthechoreographictext.

The play’s climate of graft and mutual

suspicion is set by the Director and his

neurotic Postmaster (a tour de force

from Jermaine Spivey, matching the

fast-forward vocals of Alessandro

Juliani). The crosstalk is reinforced

(andundercut)byscythinglegworkand

knotty exchanges, but t the halfwaya

markthe comic mood evaporates and

the text takes a back seat. Each dancer

reprisestheir early moves, embellishing

their original steps to a mangled remix

of their dialogue, supplemented by a

sulkythumpofelectronicpercussion.

The eight expressive dancers of the

Kidd Pivot company remind us that

Pite’s writing doesn’t need a swarming

ensemble (Polaris,Flight Pattern) to

make an impact. She doesn’t even need

steps. Her genius for plastic groupings is

enhanced as always by Tom Visser’s

painterly lighting, which adds depth

and drama to eachtableau vivant nda

gives physical expression to the narra-

tive’svertiginousshiftsofmood.

These dreamlike central sequences

distil Gogol’s morality fable to its

essence but also serve as an exploration

of the creative process. The explanatory

voiceover grows hesitant, and suddenly

we are inside the mind of a choreogra-

pher puzzling postmodernistically over

her next move: “I have given a shape

to this... mark this figure as subject

tochange.”

The farce chokes back to life for the

penultimate scene, with a virtuoso

meltdown from Spivey’s deranged Post-

master, slip-sliding on an invisible

treadmill as he “recites” the Inspector’s

tell-all letter. But the sombre mood

returns as the curtain falls in silence on

thesilhouettedensemble.

To March 5,sadlerswells.com

Absorbing blend of dance and speech

D A N C E

Crystal Pite: Revisor

Sadler’s Wells, London

aaaaa

A

s Disney’s newly stepped-

down CEORobert Igerpre-

pares to exit for good next

year, it is not hard to pic-

ture him taking a last

glance around the massed logos of his

entertainment empire. There will be a

wistful smile at a core brand pumped up

by the superheroes of the Marvel Cine-

matic Universe; an optimistic beam at

streaming behemoth Disney+; a propri-

etary nod towards 20th Century

Studios,therenamedremainsofFox.

But will his smile flicker at Pixar?

Recalling the wunderkind animation

studio he acquired in 2006, might Iger

feel an uneasy twinge at how a power-

houseofinnovationturnedonhiswatch

into a sequel factory, from which for

everyCococame two follow-ups toCars?

So much juice was squeezed from old

favourites,thecompanyrecentlyletslip

thatitwasnowoncemoretomakeorigi-

nals only. So as parting gift and start of a

new era, we haveOnward— a movie

whose animation might best be called

basic but which is clearly descended

from that first Pixar, friend of inner

childreneverywhere.

And yet, in an office drawer some-

where in Disney’s Burbank headquar-

ters must surely be a napkin with the

scribbled words “Frozen+ Boys”. The

setting is a literal magical kingdom, the

story one of sibling dynamics. But in

place of Anna and Elsa are teenage

brothers, the Lightfoots, elves although

not obtrusively so — they simply sport

pointed ears and a bluish tint — living in

a scuffed suburb of high schools and

chain restaurants. Those unicorns you

see? Feral. (Often given to foraging

inbins.)

The brothers are Ian, painfully shy

and just 16, and Barley, a little older, his

rambunctious spirit and love of hard

rock filling the film with the spirit of

Jack Black until you realise he is voiced

bySethRogen.No,wait—Chris Pratt!Ian

is played by Tom Holland; Julia Louis-

Dreyfus voices their tireless mother

Laurel. Her husband Wilden, we learn,

diedwhenthechildrenwerebabies.

Ah yes — the primal wound that is the

Pixar signature. The heartache feels

non-synthetic. Director an ScanlonD

has spoken publicly about losing his

father as a child, and unfakeable poign-

ancy informs the magic spell that

returns Wilden Lightfoot to life, for the

bittersweetdurationofasingleday.

If the movie’s sadness is real, so too is

itsoddness—sweetlyodd,oddasacom-

pliment. Thus, the spell botched, Dad

comes back only from the waist down,

good-humoured but half-disembodied

in khakis and loafers. Making him

whole requires a quest — to be tonally

juggled with messaging about lossand

the sight of half a reanimated elf in Cas-

ual Friday officewear being led around

onadogleash.Bythetimeofthecredits,

parents may still need to turn their face

from their children to quickly deal with

somethingintheireye.

Chemistry,noun: the elusive property

through which terrible films can be

made watchable, or the absence of

which can make movies that look per-

fect on paper curl up on screen like old

sandwiches. Or, as in Stella Meghie’s

The Photograph, how underwhelming

scripts blossom into warm, discreetly

old-fashionedromances.

The stars are Lakeith Stanfield,

widely seen as stellar supporting act in

filmsfromGet Out ot Knives Out,andIssa

Rae,authoroftheflawlessline“congrat-

ulations to those men” announcing this

parallel plotline of lost love in 1980s

Louisiana. It’s clunky in comparison,

and you may find yourself as keen to get

back to the present as a child waiting for

schoolholidays.

In New York, both parties know from

the start how neatly they fit as a couple.

So do we. To give all professional credit,

much of that is down to excellent per-

formances, Rae poised, Stanfield on the

cusp of roguish. Much else is that fabled

chemistry.Complicationsloom—again,

not the film’s strong suit. Revel instead

in the subtle back-and-forth of becom-

ing smitten, the glances, touches,

silences. Think of it as a dance movie, a

goodone.

Thirty-two years after it was released,

Beloved, the underratedToni Morrison

adaptation starring Oprah Winfrey as a

haunted post-Civil War mother,

remains the only Morrison novel to

reach the big screen. That scarcity is

partremediedbythenewdocumentary,

Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am. Not

every giant of modern literature would

make a compelling narrator on-screen

— but you aren’t going anywhere watch-

ing Morrison, unveiling a brilliant

mosaic of autobiography straight into

the camera, from the first influence of a

Bible-lovinggrandfatherwholearnedto

read when doing so was still illegal for

manyblackAmericans.

Amid the personal push-pull of her

literary life arose the particular tests

handed to a novelist of colour whose

childhood best friend prayed for blue

eyes, yet who was later told by critics

that to write about black lives boxed her

into a corner. Coming less than a year

after her death, the film can’t help being

an elegy — but a celebration, too, of a

woman acutely of her times and always

astepaheadofthem.

Inspired by BBC television seriesThe

Choir, director Peter Cattaneo’sMilitary

Wivesis every bit as briskly cheerful

and modestly scaled as that real-life

origin story suggests. But keep the mov-

ies in mind too — specifically,The Full

Monty, the feel-good comic-drama

Cattaneo directed to hugely popular

effect in 1997 about Sheffield steelwork-

ers reskilled as male strippers. Here, in

place of “You Sexy Thing” are the

spouses of the fictional Flitcroft bar-

racks in 2010 or thereabouts, their part-

nersdeployedtoAfghanistan.

Taking it upon herself to find ways to

distract them from the dread of bad

newsiscolonel’swifeKate(KristinScott

Thomas), wresting leadership from the

moredemocraticLisa(SharonHorgan).

“Lisa, can you write things on the board

forme?”sheaskswithlacqueredbright-

ness, before pitching the gaggle of char-

acters that make up the group a comi-

cally pretentious idea: film seasons. We

could study a famous auteur, she offers,

to visible disgust (ouch). Instead, a

choir is formed, bringing a light power

struggle and steroidal personal growth.

“Are you suggesting a performance?”

Kateasks,asifanyofushadachoice.

The opening of any film by the singu-

lar Portuguese director Pedro Costa

feels like sleepwalking — never more so

than in his latest project,Vitalina

Varela. We open at night, in deep black

and smoke grey, on a half-underground

pathway. There, shadows become fig-

ures and then in turn a funeral proces-

sion, the perfect emblem for a film in

which loaded images keep passing

before us, too strange to be beautiful,

toobeautifulnottostickinthemind.

The setting is the concrete-and-tin

Lisbon shantytown Fontainhas, an

ongoing muse for Costa much as 1950s

New York is for Scorsese. Elsewhere for

a moment, bare feet descend aeroplane

stairs — the entrance of the Vitalina of

the title, a real Cape Verdean woman of

the same name, a non-professional

actressplayingthelong-abandonedwife

of the recently deceased. She arrives in

Fontainhas too late for the funeral but

determined to see this place and

recount her own story. Costa remains a

masterofdigitalchiaroscuro,ofpolitical

ghost stories — and of the lives other

filmsleaveoutsidetheframe.

Sweet sadness in

a magical realm

Strange: non-

professional

Cape Verdean

actress Vitalina

Varela stars in

the film of the

same name

FILM

Danny

Leigh

Onward

Dan Scanlon

AAAEE

The Photograph

Stella Meghie

AAAEE

Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

AAAAE

Military Wives

Peter Cattaneo

AAAEE

Vitalina Varela

Pedro Costa

AAAAE

year’s Oscar nominees. Here, they are

Mae and Michael, briefly encountered

in a wish-fulfilment New York of

exposed brick and floor-to-ceiling glass,

with the novel twist of unfolding not in

Manhattan but elsewhere in the five

boroughs. She is a curator at the Queens

Museum, an aerial shot conducting us

inside via the Unisphere of Flushing

Meadows. He is a hotshot journalist of

non-specific brief, piecing together an

articleonarenownedphotographer.

The story leads him to the photogra-

pher’s daughter, Mae. It also sets up a

Oddness: brothers Ian and Barley, voiced by Tom Holland and Chris Pratt, in ‘Onward’. Below left: Lakeith Stanfield and Issa Rae in ‘The Photograph’

MARCH 5 2020 Section:Features Time: 3/20204/ - 18:05 User:david.cheal Page Name:ARTS LON, Part,Page,Edition:EUR , 6, 1