Vincent in Brixton - Review (From St Albans & Harpenden Review)

Vincent in Brixton - Review

9:07am Tuesday 23rd June 2009

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BROODING, malevolent, marvellous and magnificent. Vincent in Brixton provides us with that rare glimpse into the embryonic world of a genius and a madman.

So fine the line between brilliance and lunacy, Nicholas Wright’s dark and dangerous play revealing the early life of a tortured soul that was Vincent van Gogh, fleshes out the little known real life London liaison between a young Vincent and his much older landlady.

This portrait of a hazily unknown period in the artist’s life centres on Vincent’s three years staying with widow Ursula Loyer, her daughter Eugenie and a budding painter called Sam Plowman.

The play, which runs for just three days at Windsor’s Theatre Royal, is based on Vincent’s letters to his art dealer brother, Theo, in Paris between 1873 and 1876, before he genuinely took up the brush to paint a swathe of colour though all our lives.

Vincent arrives at widow Loyer’s south London home after he spots her daughter, Eugenie and apparently falls in love with the young woman. When the widow offers Vincent the chance to lodge with them it is under the strict governance that he makes no approach to Eugenie or reveals his feelings.

Why? We find out that Plowman, a working class hero who Loyer is trying to encourage to take up his art and go to college is in love with Eugenie also and she with him.

Loyer is encouraging the relationship also because her life’s work, 15 years after her husband’s death, is to find greatness in people and ‘grow them’. She thinks nothing of Vincent and everything of Plowman.

However, when Vincent learns from Loyer that her daughter and Plowman are enjoying an assignation in Kent with her blessing the pairs true feelings for each other blossom and a highly frowned upon affair between young artist and ageing widow widens both their horizons.

This dangerous liaison also, however, heralds the onset of deep, dark depressions for Vincent – manic and psychotic episodes were to blight his life until he finally shot himself while he struggled to find his unique style of painting.

This insight is tantalising in what is a many layered play.

It is a brief sketch but a vital one. The set by Christopher Hone is a simple Victorian kitchen with clothless table and bare chair – much like Vincent’s painting of his own room in Arles in France later.

And with Alan Valentine’s changing light patterns focusing on stage we see still life come to life while the players take short, barely unnoticeable breaks from speech to pose in a painting on set.

This tale is a work in progress on Vincent’s formative years.

Loyer is a huge manic depressive who Vincent finds head in hands. But she bursts into life with genuine love for Vincent as she discovers his embryonic genius.

When she discovers he is to go on to Paris she sinks back into an overwhelming darkness.

Loyer is a mirror image of Vincent showing him his own greatness but also his inevitable demise.

Of course, we all know Vincent took his own life but there are no records to account for the fate of the woman who may have given the world, arguable our greatest and most driven artist.

Lin Blakley as Loyer is hugely impressive. At one point she rocks herself in front of the fire hearth oblivious to the world, lost to all. Blakley’s performance is morosely magnificent as she delves into the mind of a manic, first sky high on life then in the depths of her own personal hell.

Mark Edel-Hunt as Vincent captures the intense, wild, self loathing, destructive, passionate overwhelming honesty of the artist.

He captures both the light and the dark shade of the man.

Alastair Whatley is genuinely believable as the down to earth antithesis of Vincent.

While Vincent strives to soar to the stars Plowman decides to settle down with Eugenie and Loyer’s life’s work is over.

This play is a broad canvass with life laid bare on it.

Vincent may even have painted the characters himself time and time again throughout his brief moment in the sun.

Coming to terms with yourself is the hardest scene for anyone to paint. Being shown your own life by a past master lifts you from a simple line drawing to a character whose colours range from bright hues to dark recesses.

Vincent’s lust for life is well known and this brief Victorian sketch may well have been the catalyst for his creative career.

This play captures his very essence. It is a work of art.

Paul Thomas.

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