Scenes from an Execution

Synopsis

Scenes from an Execution is one of Barker's most famous works. This modern classic tells of a woman's brush with history in the twilight of the Renaissance. Galactia is a talented by feisty female artist. The government of a male dominated Venice have chosen her to commemorate a recent battle victory in a vast painting. Galactia, however, rebels and portrays the true horrors of war. Can one woman's artistic integrity triumph over the power of the whole state?

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 5 October 2012

Not even jammed scenery, and a five-minute hold-up, could put the National’s first night audience off the scent of a major triumph for playwright Howard Barker (making, absurdly, his NT debut), director Tom Cairns, designer Hildegard Bechtler or Fiona Shaw.

Shaw plays Galactica, a fictional 16th century Venetian painter charged with celebrating the Battle of Lepanto on a huge canvas but producing instead the equivalent of Picasso’s Guernica, “a great waterfall of flesh” with horror to the fore and victorious sea captains to the rear.

Not that we see the painting, though we do meet one or two of the characters in it, notably a man with a boiling bowel and a bolt in his brain, and a Turkish prisoner with the reflex hots for Galactica’s daughter. This was, after all, originally, an award-winning radio play starring Glenda Jackson, who also led the fine Almeida stage version in 1990.

Cairns and Shaw now make something even...

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Latest User Review

Rds - 25 November 2012:

Challenging and stimulating - David and David Baxter shouldn't be criticised for not getting it. There was time when I'd have felt the same, but not anymore. This was the NT at its best. Fiona Shaw - Mother Courage as an artist. And as Michael Coveney puts it ".... the audience is hungry". The best thing I've seen at the NT for a long while - it reminded me of the old days! ...

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