Nina Raine’s new play Bach & Sons (premiered now in a production by Nicholas Hytner that moves with a terrific musicality) is typically sly, in the know and phenomenally eloquent.
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Rather than aggressive and frantic, Raine's text is pensive, inquisitive at times...But for the most part the piece feels encumbered by historical exposition when director Nick Hytner could make it lithe and punchy...
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Bach’s musical theories are delivered in stagnant conversation...It is maddening to see all the signs of a powerful play folded inside a frustratingly flat one.
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Nicholas Hytner’s period-costume production makes intelligent use of Bach’s music, even if some of the mimed keyboard-playing is a little ripe.
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But ‘Bach & Sons’ is entertaining stuff, made with care, and if the drama is on the cosy side, it’s worth saying the music always thrills, melodic razors of harpsichord, slashing thrilling patterns through the air.
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A bold play of ideas, then, but also an invitation to tears; after the indescribable year we’ve had, it’s a stirring and unmissable occasion.
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But ultimately this play revolves - wittily, cleverly, but repetitively - around the themes of flawed genius and the poisonous legacies of fame and family.
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Bach’s musical theories are delivered in stagnant conversation...It is maddening to see all the signs of a powerful play folded inside a frustratingly flat one.
Read more