The Painter at Arcola Theatre

The Painter at Arcola Theatre

18 January, 2011
by: Tom Jeffreys

Tom Jeffreys gets very excited by The Painter, but ultimately leaves a bit disappointed.

Currently showing at the recently relocated Arcola Theatre in Hackney, Rebecca Lenkiewicz's new play, The Painter, about the life of landscape painter JMW Turner is, as they say in football speak, a game of two halves. The first is an absolute cracker; so much so that at half-time I can barely contain my excitement. The problem is that in the second half, it just seems to lose its way.

The setting – beautifully rendered in the Arcola's atmospheric new premises – is predominantly in Turner's studio, with the odd trip to the Royal Academy for a lecture, to the pub, or to the parlour of the pregnant widow who lives next door. These little flits are deftly handled with a simple lighting switch and assume a refreshing level of intelligence in the audience – something also evident from the relative lack of clunky contextual exposition in Lenkiewicz's pitch-perfect script.

In terms of structure, The Painter is fairly similar in some ways to the last play I saw at the Arcola – Reclining Nude with Black Stockings, about the life of Egon Schiele. Both concern painters grappling with their own sense of genius, both involve a love triangle featuring a model/prostitute, and both feature a strong paternalistic figure, in this case Turner's father (a quite wonderfully understated Jim Bywater) keeping a careful watch over things.

I gave the Schiele play five stars when I reviewed it, and for a while this was looking even better. Toby Jones is exceptional as Turner – surly, arrogant, detached and taciturn. Jones' lines are pretty minimal at first, and it's up to the actor's superlative comic timing and face (not dissimilar to that of a craggy, saggy Antony Worall-Thompson) to do the hard yards. But it works, and brilliantly. His gruffly affectionate exchanges with his father are a total treat, and one of the play's many highlights.

Denise Gough (who plays Irish tart with a heart, Jenny Cole) gives a performance that exudes energy, charm, wit, some splendid swearing and a hidden emotional vulnerability. She's probably the best thing in the play, particularly in the second half where, for me, things begin to fade around her. Niamh Cusack does an excellent job portraying pregnant widow turned controlling lover Sarah Danby – it's just that the character is so unpleasant that her gradual domination of the play prevents one's enjoyment of it.

Likewise, Turner's mother (a slightly over-the-top Amanda Boxer) whose descent into madness casts a dark shadow across the second half. Primarily I think it's these two characters that hinder the ascent toward the sublime that the play (and Turner himself) seeks. Of course not everything can be sweetness and light all the time (and Turner's life was indeed a strange and difficult one) but the attempts to ramp up the bleakness actually seem to stall the narrative. Whilst the first half sings with a delicate tension between gloom and humour, the second goes too far and the play, sadly, loses its poise.

The Painter is a play with problems certainly, but in patches it's a complete delight.

The Painter is at Arcola Theatre until 12th February 2011.

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Image credit: Simon Annand

Tom Jeffreys