This production is part of the first Citizens' season since the artistic directorate announced that they will be stepping down next year. The 33-year reign of Giles Havergal, Philip Prowse and Robert David MacDonald has been the longest in British theatre. It has been characterised by a flamboyance bordering on downright camp: the three directors have often been controversial, but never bland.
In this context, Prowse's resolutely untheatrical production of Britannicus is a thundering disappointment. It is so far from the Citizens' trademark flair that for long periods it is barely even competent.
The actors stumble over their lines and stand immobile for most of the play; one is forced to wonder whether it was rehearsed at all. Throughout Agrippina's five-minute speech early in act four, my view of her was entirely obscured by Nero. As far as I could discern, neither actor moved a muscle for the entire five minutes. Whenever Prowse does allow his actors to move, their actions come suddenly and fleetingly.
There is little, if any, concession to the theatrical in this production. On the positive side, MacDonald's translation of Racine's 17th-century classic is as mordant and muscular as we have come to expect. He has done a fine job of retaining Racine's tragic grandeur in an accessibly modern idiom.
But Prowse resists the narrative drive of the text. Each scene starts on a note - rarely a new one - and sustains that note throughout. Perhaps we have been spoiled into expecting a dizzying key change several times per scene from this director; either way, he does not provide one. His narrative moves as little and as torpidly as his actors.
This is so much more of a shame because Prowse clearly has a talented, if under-rehearsed, cast. Sarah Walton is tight-lipped and phlegmatic under extreme duress as Julia, the unfortunate lover of Britannicus and sexual quarry of Nero. Aleksandar Mikic as Britannicus, loathed little brother of the emperor Nero, is as dynamic and passionate as the directorial constraints allow him to be. And as Nero, Paul Albertson struts around like an injured pigeon, giving heavy hints of the future psychopath who will murder his mother and fiddle while Rome burns.
Their spark is not enough, however, to override the stilted inertia of the production as a whole. There is an almost complete lack of attention to the internal movement of each scene, which leaves the cast little to do but fiddle while the production burns.
· Until November 16. Box office: 0141-429 0022.
