Review: THE SCORE at Sidney Harman Hall

I was eager to see The Shakespeare Theatre's presentation of The Score for the same reason, I'm sure, as most people who will see it: the opportunity to see Brian Cox as Johann Sebastian Bach. The stalwart Scottish actor has been a regular presence in film and TV for several decades now. As every movie trivia buff knows, he was the first actor to portray Hannibal Lecter in Michael Mann's 1986 film Manhunter, in an understated, calculating performance that contrasts intriguingly with Anthony Hopkins' more famous theatrically menacing interpretation. The hair on the back of your neck stands up when Cox's Lecter matter-of-factly asks "Have you ever seen blood in the moonlight, Will? It appears quite black."  With appearances in Rushmore, Adaptation, and more recently his acclaimed turn as the loathsome media empire patriarch Logan Roy in HBO's Succession he has earned  a reputation for creating fleshed out, memorable characters. And he more than lives up to that repuation here. Cox is commanding presence as Bach. In whatever situation Oliver Cotton's script places him, one is conscious of  observing a master thespian at work. 

 Unfortunately, one is left wishing that he and the rest of the cast had better material to work with. In the first scene, set in 1747 Liepzeig, where Bach is the choir director of the a boys' school, the composer urged by his wife, Anna (Cox's real-life wife, Nicole Ansari) to finally accept the summons of Frederick II, King of Prussia to appear at the Royal Court. Bach  replies that he is reluctant to go because his daughter, Reginia, is ailing and he does not want to leave her side. You might expect that Regina's fate might play a signficiant part in the play, but she never appears and, unless I missed it, is never mentioned again after that scene. This is  a recurring problem in the story: various ostensibly significant elements are introduced, then neglected, or not incorporated into any sort of overarching theme.

The action of the play is based on the historical event of Frederick (played with the air of an overconfident tech bro by Stephen Hagan) inviting Bach to the court, which led to Bach's composing his famed Musical Offering, which I'm listening to as I write. Bach stays with his son, Carl Phillip Emanuel (Jamie Wilkes) a famed composer in his own right, who is employed at the court. At the court, characters nervously look over their shoulders when speaking of Frederick; stories are told of those who speak against him disappearing or otherwise coming to grief.  Bach, an aging man of faith, is repulsed by the upstart atheistic monarch's warmongering, and eventually tells him so. Now, suppose these elements had been developed in a parallel fashion, and we saw Bach philosophically sparring with the king whilst composing his famed opus. That would have made for provocative and engaging theatre.  Instead, much of the middle of the play is preoccupied by a wager between Carl, the king, and three other court composers-Graun, Quantz, and Benda, a sort of Enlightment-era Three Stooges-as to Bach's ability to compose a three-voice fugue on one of the king's musical compositions. (This challenge, too, is based in fact.)  When the challenge concludes, and Bach demands to know why Frederick has not disciplines soldiers who raped a young blind woman in Liepzig, your thought isn't so much "My God, he's risking his life to speak for justice!" as "Oh, yeah, forgot about that."  The remainder of the play is essentially an extended dialog between Bach and Frederick which makes several visits to the Department of Redundancy Department.

For the record, I generally like works with multiple character ars subplots. It is interesting to see different perspectives on the same events. The problem, again, is that the various elements lack a coherent unifying theme. One wonders, for instance, what to make of the scene where Anna refuses to allow troops to be billeted in the school where she and Bach live, bluffing that her husband has thee King's favor. Similarly, the presence of the deist philosopher Voltaire (amusingly played as a free-spirited dreadlocked bohemian by Peter de Jersey) does not add anything especially meaningful to the story.  I haven't even discussed the story of Emelia, the servant...and I'm not going to.

The production began at the Royal Bath Theatre under the direction of Trevor Nunn, a towering figure in British Theatre and past artistic director the Royal Shakespeare Company. Any chance to observe his work should be taken. The entire cast performs admirably Aesthetically, the production is flawless Robert Jones' set and costumes and Johanna Town's lighting give the feeling of watching a live-action Renaissance painting.

Much of the press coverage for The Score has focused on the timeliness of the play's theme of art in conflict with power. Its opening at Sidney Harman Hall coincided with the much-publicized  dropping of rapper Macklemore from Ed SHeeran's tour after denouncing the Israeli assault on Gaza. (Cox himself has weighed in on the issue, describing himself as "too old, too tired,  and too talented" to be concerned with any negative impact speaking on behalf of the Palestinians might have on his career.) This is indeed an important and timely theme, and there are genuinely powerful moments in the play, but, again, one wishes for a clearer focus.

The Score runs nearly three hours, with one intermission, and believe me, you will feel it.