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Precious is a new-style weepie but one that is much more bracing than depressing
Precious
Theatre
Ian McKellen is captivating throughout. He delights in the play’s gallows humour, yet is also maudlin and poignant
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Theatre
Slight quibbles notwithstanding, this will set the West End’s stock riding high
Enron
Utterly, utterly brilliant. You really are in for a treat
Though 'Trilogy' has won rave reviews, I personally found myself exasperated after about an hour
We went on a quiet sunday evening and the food was excellent, but the experience let down by the service and ambiance
London,
Fiona Mountford's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Philip Franks.
Cast: Michael Pennington, David Horovitch
Description: Michael Pennington and David Horovitch star in Ronald Harwood's drama about Berlin Philharmonic conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler and how he became a target for interrogation as a Nazi sympathiser.
Trains: Tube: Covent Garden 
Phone: 0870890 1103
Website: www.nimaxtheatres.com
Caught: Strauss (Michael Pennington)
“What would you have done in my shoes?" The plaintive cry of composer Richard Strauss, backed into collaboration with the Nazi regime, echoes down the decades. These sophisticated dramas from Ronald Harwood, cleverly paired for the first time in a compelling double bill from Chichester Festival Theatre, serve as a ringing reminder that it is all too easy for us to import our moral absolutes from another time and another place.
Both pieces centre on distinguished German artists forced to account for their activities under the Third Reich. Taking Sides (1995), more satisfyingly complex because of the greater moral uncertainty surrounding its subject, pits legendary conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler (Michael Pennington) against American Major Steve Arnold (David Horovitch) of the De‑Nazification Commission in 1946 Berlin. Collaboration (2008) gives Strauss (Pennington again) an easier time of it, categorising his particular compromises as prudent moves to protect his Jewish daughter-in-law.
The two plays, seen together like this in elegant productions from Philip Franks, gain strength and depth from each other. It’s intriguing to witness the strong case for the prosecution in Sides but then to turn to Collaboration for evidence of how the Nazis squeezed until the pips squeaked.
Pennington is magnificent as the two music men, giving Furtwängler a patrician aloofness that recoils from Arnold’s dogged cultural ignorance, and showing how Strauss’s artistic self-absorption led to a dangerous divorce from reality and ultimately cost him his precious friendship with Jewish librettist Stefan Zweig (Horovitch). Horovitch’s chameleon brilliance means that he is unrecognisable in his switch between American bumptiousness and Austrian reserve.
This is a rich, rewarding trip to a place where guilt and innocence have been painted over by umpteen shades of grey.
Until 22 August (0844 412 4659, www.nimaxtheatres.com).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
