Showing between Wednesday 28th and Saturday 31st January 2009 @ Bristol Old Vic

Last July, the Bristol Old Vic’s vivacious Young Company won critical acclaim for their creative adaptation of Samson and Delilah and sold out the smaller studio stage at hyper speed. For a theatre that’s both keen to get bums on seats during a mammoth fundraising appeal and prides itself on the strength of its in house productions, it was a stroke of genius to invite the talented youths back, this time to the Old Vic’s magnificent main auditorium.

This stunning production translates the biblical epic of lovers Samson and Delilah into a mythical wartime – an alternate 1940s where BBC English-spouting ‘chaps’ are doing their darndest to defeat the Bosche. In this dream-like universe, fighter pilot Samson (Jack Brown) is flung into the path of the beautiful nurse Delilah (Kerry Lovell) at a military hospital after he miraculously escapes a nose-diving plane. Their growing passion is interlaced with other biblical narratives, including the plight of Prime Minister Adam and Lady Eve, their daughter trainee nurse, Apple, and court-marshalled homosexual Abel. The embittered, manic and cake-gorging Captain Lucifer (played magnificently with almost David Walliams-esque hysteria by Tom England) tempts Delilah to betray her love and act as his spy. During such times of conflict, loyalties are tested and the choice between personal happiness and greater good must be made.

Everything about this production was slick and thought-provoking. The script moved from original dialogue to a clever pastiche of famous wartime rhetoric, using Churchill’s ‘We’ll fight on the beaches…’ and scenes from cinematic classics like ‘A matter of life and death’ with convincing authority. The staging was innovative: hospital beds doubled up as POW cells and were thrown about the stage in a spectacular and immaculately choreographed fight scene that at one point saw Samson narrowly avoid being flung into the wings by clinging horizontally to a rapidly spinning bed. When characters switched on the wireless, Belleville rendezvous type melodies issued from a red-lipped and cloche-headed duo at the side of the stage. At other points the entire company broke into sombre choral work that – like the ghostly breath as Delilah fatally clips a lock from Samson’s hair – permeated the audience from all directions.

Due to the aesthetic richness of its wartime setting, Samson and Delilah could have easily slipped into a very beautiful but vacuous nostalgia trip. The staging, however, was so fresh and the actors so dynamic that the whole production was thoroughly dazzling. Read the cast and production list closely; you’ll certainly be hearing from many of the names in years to come.

www.bristololdvic.org.uk

Laura Snoad