Philip Glass’s Satyagraha review: Perfectly thought-through and immaculately staged
PHELIM McDermott and the theatre company Improbable have staged spectacular productions over the years but the most innovative is Satyagraha, about the founding of Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violent resistance, premiered at the Coliseum in 2007.
Nearly all effects are achieved by pages of newspapers.
Newsprint is made into papier maché monsters, grotesque masks, or into a conveyor belt of separate pages winging across the stage. The suggestion is that any mass movement needs newspapers to get its message across.
Glass’s minimalist music is a meditation that flows through the events of Gandhi’s life. There are confrontations, such as Gandhi’s rescue from an angry horde of Boers by the superintendent of police’s wife Mrs Alexander (Sarah Pring) who walks him through the crowd using her parasol as a shield.
Tenor Toby Spence sings the principal role of Gandhi exquisitely with an essential stillness to the final contemplative aria.
As Gandhi’s secretary Miss Schlesen, Charlotte Beament’s stratospheric coloratura soars above the chorus.
Perfectly thought-through and immaculately staged.
