Major stage works do not issue often from Peter Barnes' pen. He received acclaim for "The Ruling Class" (1968) and an Olivier Award for Red Noses (1985), but his last entry was Sunsets and Glories back in 1990. Now he has made up for lost time with Dreaming -- which, under his own direction, proves to be one of the most exciting, ebullient and enterprising endeavors in ages. That it has been drawing pitifully-tiny audiences is a scandal. The work is an epic that presents nearly three dozen characters, here played by a company of fifteen. Eclectic in style, it offers serious philosophy, hilarious jokes, poetic speeches, the singing of rhymed doggerel, dances -- and one startling vision after another.
We begin with the final carnage at the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471. With peace seemingly at hand, Captain Mallory (Gerard Murphy) sets out on an Odyssean trek toward hearth and home. He is accompanied by Jack Skelton (James Clyde), who longs for death, along with the outspoken Bess (Dilys Laye) and her young, money grubbing sidekick Davy (Ian Pepperell), who recall Brecht's Mother Courage and Swiss Cheese. It's not long before a limping pastyfaced Richard Duke of Gloucester (Christopher Ettridge, resembling Bela Lugosi's Dracula) puts in the first of several appearances, amusingly paraphrasing his Shakespearean counterpart ("Now is the winter of my deep content," "To horse, to horse! Why can I never find a horse?!") or turning "son of York" into "rise with this sun of York." On the journey, a tavern customer asks what a fly is doing in the soup, only to have the waitress reply, "Looks like the backstroke." Later a crucified Christ figure actually descends from the cross, says, "I used to be quite a joker -- they cut all that out of the Good Book," and launches into a series of Jewish jokes.
There is Jethro Kell (Paul Jesson), a priest who carries a cross with a pop-out dagger (like a switch-blade knife), and laments peacetime idleness ("Military men always like priests about to justify the slaughter") before taking up with Bess and asserting that the appropriate punishment for adultery is "Two mothers-in-law." From time to time characters die before our eyes, only to stand up and offer further commentary. When Mallory finds that his wife Sarah and daughter are dead, he marries Susan Beaufort (Kate Isitt) and persuades himself that she is really Sarah.
In the final scene, the pair clamber through a snowstorm to the top of a mountain, where they freeze to death -- Barnes' homage to Ibsen's Brand, John Gabriel Borkman, and especially the valedictory When We Dead Awaken. It is important to realize that this entire play is a dream -- sometimes a nightmare and sometimes not. It is kaleidoscopic like a dream -- a person turns into someone else, a place dissolves into a different locale, indoors suddenly becomes outdoors, the "Dies Irae" changes into a raucous song.
All this poses difficult problems for a director, but since Barnes is overseeing this production, he has only himself to thank. He is brilliantly served by Alan Miller Bunford's settings -- especially the enormous, tilted circular upstage mirror, which allows us to see the actors from two angles as well as reflecting all the rotting corpses on the ground. Douglas Kuhrt's wondrous lighting facilitates the countless quick shifts of view. In all, a masterly script and a magnificent cast provide a monumental experience.
