Review: The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk, Old Vic

With its criss-cross poles and sail-cloths, Sophia Clist’s set design for Kneehigh’s The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk echoes the angular, soaring quality of many of Marc Chagall’s paintings and stained-glass window designs, and creates a small intimate space on Bristol Old Vic’s cavernous stage in which just two performers and two musicians set about telling the story of Marc and Bella Chagall’s flight from both Communist pogroms and Nazi terror.

And storytelling, old-fashioned and quaint in places, is at the heart of Daniel Jamieson’s script, first produced by Theatre Alibi back in 1992 with Jamieson and outgoing Kneehigh director Emma Rice playing the flying, fleeing pair of lovers. There’s a palpable sense of nostalgia in the production, no doubt brought about by reviving what was an early piece of work for Rice as she departs from her years at the artistic helm of Kneehigh for her new post at The Globe Theatre, where she has already attracted critical acclaim for her playfully erotic production of A Midsummer’s Night Dream.

This is a smaller and more delicate show than what we’ve come to expect from Kneehigh, devoid of much of the exuberance and spectacle that has become their trademark. It almost asks to be staged in a smaller space – I’d have preferred to have seen it in the BOV Studio where it could have had more of a ‘reach out and touch’ quality. At just two hours, it’s also a short show that doesn’t really support an interval and would feel more holistic without one.

Marc Antolin positively shines as painter Marc Chagall. His performance is clownlike and graceful, evoking the silent movie age, and his sweet singing voice is worth the ticket price alone. The klezmer-style music and songs are really the star of this show, with gorgeous four-part harmonies delivered in a Balkan style. Audrey Brisson is an ethereal Bella, but one with her feet on the ground, though her emergence as a budding writer seems to come out of the blue in the script.

Beguiling though it is, the play lacks an essential sense of jeopardy, which is odd as the couple are fleeing the major calamities of the war-torn 20th century, but do so in such an impressionistic, dreamlike way that it fails to truly move the audience. What is affecting, though, is the knowledge that their beloved hometown was utterly decimated, with only 118 residents out of 17,000 in Vitebsk surviving the war. In that light, the show reflects the plight of refugees currently fleeing their homes all over the world, and makes the millions of heartbreaks in a mass exodus more poignant  and personal by focusing in on the story of one small pair of fleeing lovers.

The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk continues at Bristol Old Vic until Saturday June 11. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.bristololdvic.org.uk/flyinglovers.html