★★☆☆☆
This ambitious outdoor staging of the Shakespeare contemporary John Lyly’s rarely staged rural comedy has been a long-held dream on the part of its director, Emma Frankland. A humorous consideration of love and honour among mortals and deities, the play was performed 435 years ago in front of Queen Elizabeth I. Frankland and the co-adapter Subira Joy have given the text a timely and heartfelt trans/queer/non-binary update delivered by a 15-strong cast in both spoken English and British Sign Language, with additional support from an ensemble of locally recruited adults and children.
Co-produced with, among others, Marlborough Productions and the Cornish landscape theatre company Wildworks, this Brighton Festival commission is loaded with good intentions. How disappointing that the actual results — at least based upon the evidence of this past weekend’s sun-drenched matinee — don’t yet add up to a truly satisfying theatrical experience.
It’s not for want of trying. Galatea is being presented in a corner of a recreation field in the coastal town Shoreham-by-Sea, a 15-minute train journey from Brighton. The setting is akin to a low-key fairground, with blanket or bleacher seating and concession stands fanned out around a central playing area backed by a crescent of tiered platforms and a projection screen. (The designs, including the stylishly motley costumes, are by Mydd Pharo.)
The atmosphere is very relaxed. Maybe too much so. The laid-back vibe seemed to infect a performance that felt curiously slack, laboured and under-rehearsed. (The show did open nearly a week late due to “unforeseen cicumstances” at the site.) The energy level overall often seemed hesitant — not what you want from a narrative pinned to a mix of ardent human desire and god-fuelled passions.
There were, however, several bright sparks in the cast. Sophie Stone relished her BSL introductory duties, later returning as a vivid Venus in a voluminous pink tulle skirt to do climactic battle with Nadia Nadarajah’s fearsomely chaste Diana. The wiry non-binary performer Wet Mess played Venus’s son, Cupid, as an aptly cheeky clown. I took a shine to Richard P Peralta as a shipwrecked migrant who forms a sincere bond with Caz Teague’s agreeable assistant alchemist. And Bea Webster made the most of a single scene as an intended sacrificial victim, running the gamut from breast-beating panic to ambiguous relief. Femi Tiwo, in the title role, landed the honour of a curtain speech full of beautifully expressed and necessary sentiments about acceptance. With luck, Frankland’s Galatea will make good on all this by upping the dramatic ante during its final week.
To May 21, brightonfestival.org
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