There have been several plays about Florence Foster Jenkins, the American heiress, eccentric and self-proclaimed opera diva, one starring Maureen Lipman. I doubt any of them match this production by Dutch company Mtg de Koude Kermis in which form is so perfectly aligned with content.
On a set like a playground, with sumptuous backdrop badly hung, cushionless chaise longue, thunderboard, wooden horse, and piano, three performers lurch through episodes from Florence’s eventful life. It is a proper ensemble piece, with dramatic lighting effects, rich with music, using the full height of the Warren’s stage.
Florence is played with majestic, mad-eyed force by Paméla Menzo, dressed in gold with hair piled high. Anne van Darp, co-deviser of the piece with Menzo, is maid and accomplice, and gives a perfectly pitched and beautifully controlled comic performance. Pianist Jan van Grootheest completes the trio, playing more than accompaniment with quiet resignation.
They give us vignettes, some just in movement, some through text and some, inevitably, horribly sung. They build into a full picture of a woman constrained by her class and fuelled by her ego.
The concept is this: Florence is preparing for an autobiographical performance and with her faithful maid works through various scenarios to see what will make the final cut. She types out grandiose, self-aggrandising lines, which the maid reads on cramp-inducing tip-toe (the microphone is set at Florence’s height) while Florence searches for the right gesture or throws herself head first onto the chaise and moans.
We hear echoes of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas from the piano, we see horses, Florence sings for us, ouch. There is a bear hunt, cake is eaten, a Marie Antoinette styled aria fails to materialize, Florence hangs from a rope clutching a ladder, antlers are worn, and an angel appears. For a fleeting moment the maid creeps across the stage as an aged crone. It is wonderfully deranged and thoroughly off-key.
All is done with economy, an eye for the visual, with physical grace and just the right level of exuberance. If it is as scatty, affecting and surprising as the life itself, it is not without pathos. Dressed as a character from Madame Butterfly, the maid reads lines from Florence’s father – ‘Choose horses or ponies, ponies or horses. There will be no singing in my house.’ Behind the collapsed scenery, Florence sits, taking the wig from her bowed head. We see here, how a woman, denied her passion for music, has in later life forced herself into a role. There is a fragility behind the egocentric bombast and a true desire to entertain and be loved.
