Reviews

Eternal Love (tour – Arts Theatre, Cambridge)

Howard Brenton’s new title for his drama about Abelard and Eloise, “Eternal Love”, is itself a play upon words. Eternal and love are at the same time human, religious and political-philosophical concepts

David Sturzaker & Jo Herbert
David Sturzaker & Jo Herbert
© Robert Day

ETT and the Globe Theatre on Tour have partnered for this revised staging of John Dove's production (the play in 2006 was titled In Extremis). It has an epic sweep, with scenes melting into each other as the 30-year story unfolds. As with many epics, however, the humanity of the protagonists is somewhat submerged.

Even allowing for 21st century sensibilities about teenage student/20 years older tutor relationships, the obligations of hospitality and both the nature and expression of belief, it is difficult to warm to these characters.

Abelard (David Sturzaker) is arrogant in his intellectual mastery and Sam Crane as Bernard of Clairvaux offers an equally blinkered mirror image.

I could accept Jo Herbert's Eloise as a young woman with practical as well as cerebral talents more easily than as the sex-hungry kitten who matches Abelard's passion but wants to pay in a currency of her own when their affair is revealed. As Abbess of the Paraclete convent in the latter part of the play, Herbert's portrait rings true.

The large cast includes Julius D'Silva as Louis VI, enjoying theological debate as a courtly entertainment, and Edward Peel as Canon Fulbert, Eloise's uncle whose revenge for the betrayal of opening his home to the admired scholar who then seduces his niece is shown as acceptable within the social conventions of the 12th century.

High in a gallery at the back of the stage, musicians with composer-director William Lyons remind us that the medieval world had a secular as well as sacred soundscape. Michael Taylor's set is a simple matter of walls and trees supplemented by stools and a table with sumptuous costumes for the court scenes.

It's a true story dealing with hot blood, high ideals and a level both of certainties and a thirst to explore their truth with which it is perhaps difficult to engage as much as one might wish to. The production and acting are both very good. It is the play itself which, for me at any rate, lacks heart.

Eternal Love plays at the Arts Theatre, Cambridge until 8 February and then tours nationally until 12 April.