Stereophonic is a triumph. It’s that rare theatrical event where everything comes together to make an evening in the theatre both new and timeless. At first sight, the premise is simple: a rock band is making their second album in a recording studio – 5 musicians/singers, two technicians, one set.
The play is about what it takes to make art. Any kind of art, but in this case, an album which we know will become a worldwide best-seller and make the group mega-stars. How do we know? Because it’s based, don’t let them tell you it’s not, on the real group Fleetwood Mac and their second album Rumors.
Seven individuals, talented, irritating, contentious, insecure and ambitious, are finding a way collectively to make something rare and irreplacable – a work of art. They argue, take industrial quantities of drugs and alcohol, marry, separate, try and fail and try again, but over what turns out to be two years in the same grotty studio with the same shabby furnishings, they keep at it. They never give up and they eventually find their nirvana, a set of songs that, almost accidentally, will transcend everything that came before.
Stereophonic is long, more than 3 hours, and has its dead moments, all carefully calibrated to balance the explosion of sounds and personalities. The cast, all seven of them, some from the original cast, others new to the play, are superlative, as good as or better than they were in New York.
David Adjmi’s play and Daniel Aukin’s meticulous direction have understood that this process, this daily grinding specificity of tiny details, disagreements, exhaustion, personal worries, professional vulnerabilities and petty jealousies, if taken in the right doses, can make magic. Can, in fact, make art.
Before Stereophonic, only Stephen Sondheim (‘Art Isn’t Easy’ ‘Finishing The Hat’) has ever come as close to explaining to us, the audience, what art is and what an artist does to achieve it. As I said, a triumph.
The post Ruth Leon’s Theatre Pocket Review: Stereophonic – Duke of York’s Theatre appeared first on Slippedisc.
