Cooking with Puccini
The Herald review
The poster-image for Jeffrey Mayhew's wonderful one-man show Swift (hot from three successful weeks at the Edinburgh Festival) shows the great satirist with one eye sharply focused and one eye madly staring – and that is exactly the Swift we are given: a genius poised between coruscating, lucid vision and descent into near lunacy.
It is a beautifully-constructed show with familiar episodes from Gulliver's Travels counterbalanced against rarer writings and insights into a fascinating and troubled life. It also mirrors Swift's own veering between high intellectual pursuits, sardonic worldly realism and the simply lavatorial.
Jeffrey Mayhew gives a riveting performance as Swift – and indeed many other characters in this production directed by Guy Masterson, himself a doyen of the one-man show. Masterly command of voice and gesture peoples the stage with remarkably vivid representations of all the people in the story and furthermore establishes an extraordinary sympathy for a man who was probably more provoking and entertaining than wholly likeable. We are watching an inspired and disciplined theatrical craftsman at work.
If you didn't catch this little theatrical jewel at Edinburgh or at Christ's Hospital, it is set for a week's run at DramaZone in Arundel later in the year. Don't miss it then!
Paul Ward