Turandot

Synopsis

The Emperor of China is not happy. A bumper harvest has devalued his cotton shares and drained the imperial coffers. His team of spin doctors resort to desperate measures to bump up the price but will they be able to conceal the truth from the public? With the hand of the beautiful Princess Turandot on offer to the man whose intellect can save the dynasty, the dashing Gogher Gogh arrives at the palace. But he's not exactly the sharpest tool in the box... Written just before Brecht's death and never performed in his lifetime, this comic parable is one of the most engaging and perceptive of his late plays.

Our Review:

9 September 2008

If nothing else, Hampstead Theatre gives us an opportunity to see a version – the British premiere, in fact – of Bertolt Brecht’s last play. A programme note by the play’s translator, Edward Kemp, explains that much of the fairy-story of the Emperor of China’s daughter, Turandot, deciding on a husband by setting her suitors a riddle to solve, was reconceived to reflect tensions and debates in the politics of post-War East Berlin.

Not much of this comes across in performance, but anyone interested in the twentieth century’s most important and influential playwright will not want to miss the final part of his “Eastern” trilogy, after The Good Person of Setzuan and The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and a fascinating, if muddled, complement to his other jungle warfare parables, Saint Joan of the Stockyards and Arturo Ui.

Anthony Clark’s production, with terrific new songs by Mia Soteriou (not enough of them after the interval) is co...

Read more of the review

Latest User Review

Mike Oxbent - 1 October 2008:

The main problem I had with the production was not the standard of acting (per se), but the play itself. Initially the message is clear - the Emperor, unsuited to his position, causes havoc with his country's cotton supply, thereby revealing that those who lust after power are often those least suited to weild it. However, the play loses its focus into the second half - Brecht starts to throw a cast of gangsters into the array, muddling the message and weakening the overall effect of the piece. Brecht wrote this as he was dying - and it shows. A heartfelt performance from the entire cast (mostly), yet I still left feeling incredibly unsatisfied. I wouldn't recommend it to a Brecht fan (or, for that matter, my worst enemy). The production was ambitious and mildly amusing in places but, ultimately, pointless....

Read more and add your own review