The first half of Robin French’s Crooked Dances is a love letter to live performance. Set around a piano in the south of France where an ailing musician hides from modern life, it is melancholic, nostalgic and laced with magical realism. But after a lavish setup, this Alpine drama goes way off piste, throwing itself wholeheartedly into eye-rollingly earnest astrological exploration.
A newspaper assignment throws together a frantic writer, Katy (Jeany Spark), and a charmingly shallow photographer, Nick (Olly Mott). They’re given the task of profiling a world-renowned concert pianist, Silvia de Zingaro, played with a ghostly ferocity by Ruth Lass. Both are welcomed and warned by the overprotective manager, Denis (Ben Onwukwe), but the pair are antsy, ungrateful and stressed by the lack of wifi. As Katy and Nick are forced to swap their digital equipment for cassette tapes and film, the play pits old against new, with each generation dismissive of the other.
Most resonant is their touching discussion of how we anchor our attention. Love, Silvia tells Katy, is “to have someone’s time, attention, to feel you are somebody’s priority.” They’re all searching for the same thing: Katy with her questions, Nick with his photography and Silvia with her music. They want to create the right atmosphere to capture someone’s focus long enough for it to feel like they matter. It’s what the performance is aiming for too and it’s a beautiful attempt, just a shame it runs away with itself.
After the interval, delicate nudges at something otherworldy become fully fledged investigations into the occult; Silvia’s secrets are revealed in a dreamlike sequence of events where astrology takes over and music becomes a spell. The exposition is so detailed that it loses the precious focus it strived for, and the play starts to wallow in its weirdness.
But Elizabeth Freestone’s direction is gentle and attentive. As Katy interviews Silvia, it’s a pleasure to watch Nick set up lights for his photograph around Denis, slow and deliberate. For a short period of time, Max Pappenheim’s sneaking sound and Lauren Watson’s tender lighting, combined with Lass’s intimate piano playing, truly create the illusion of music as at once deeply mystical and intensely human.
• Crooked Dances is at the Other Place, Stratford-Upon-Avon, until 13 July.
