Farinelli and the King

by Claire van Kampen

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse 23 February 2015

This new play stars Mark Rylance as King Philip V of Spain and Sam Crane as the castrato Farinelli, with his arias sung by Iestyn Davies (sung in some performances by William Purefoy). King Philip suffered from what may have been deep depression, but this was much alleviated by the singing of Farinelli, who relinquished a glittering public career to become part of the king's household. Even after the king's death he did not resume singing in public.

Mark Rylance gives a consummate performance as the troubled king. The intimate setting of the playhouse gives him the chance to be quietly desperate, almost conversational, so that his occasional outbursts of anger and violence are the more shocking. We seem to be eavesdropping on a very private torment.

Sam Crane portrays Farinelli as a sympathetic character - it is the appeal to his good nature which prompts him first to visit and ultimately to stay with the Spanish royal family - and the use of both an actor and a singer for the part is well managed (the singer only appears when required, usually dressed identically to the actor), providing a nice underlining of the difference between the person and the performer. Iestyn Davies sings the arias with a beautiful clarity and control, exquisitely suitable to the space of the theatre.

The king, the singer and the location are the reasons for seeing this play, which in itself is not a great work. With one representative courtier and one sympathetic doctor (whose own risky situation is glanced at but not developed) there is little scope to investigate the political repercussions of the king's illness; most of the interest lies in the personal anguish so well revealed by Mark Rylance. Because the interest of the play lies in the therapeutic influence of Farinelli's singing his character is barely revealed beyond Metastasio's account of him to the queen and the first interview between him and the king. The arias, though ravishing to listen to, are set pieces whose possible relevance to the matter in hand is masked by their being in Italian. (There is no indication in the program of their provenance.)

The queen is represented as loyal but baffled; again the political dimension is downplayed in favour of the domestic drama (she was effectively a regent on many occasions). She also has an implausible penchant for criss-crossing Europe so as to have heard Farinelli in London and to have met Metastasio in Vienna without his knowing who she was. This is silly comedy at Metastasio's expense; not even minor royalty in the eighteenth century would be paying calls incognito with address cards to hand 'in case you change your mind'; the Spanish queen is even less likely to have done so. (In fact Farinelli was summoned to Madrid from London via diplomatic channels.) Her description of her response to Farinelli's singing is pedestrian, as many attempts to eulogise musical genius via 'audience reaction' so often are. 

The use of Metastasio as narrator towards the end to bridge the gap between the main action of the play in the 1730's and Farinelli's reclusive later life is just so much potted biography rather than true drama. The final scene, in which Farinelli is cajoled into singing as payment for a coat, provides a superlative rendition of the aria 'Lascia ch'io pangia' - but the situation is sentimental and the aria was not written for a castrato singer. Using Mark Rylance to play the tailor is a peculiar move, rendering the situation even more unreal. The poignant gesture of the singer Farinelli for the only time touching the actor Farinelli is a marvellous recognition of transience and farewell, but the set-up is contrived.

The fuller ramifications of a king's madness have been better treated in Alan Bennett's 'The Madness of George III' while the impact of a brilliant musician has been more persuasively imagined in Peter Shaeffer's 'Amadeus', where Salieri's reaction to Mozart is informed by his own musical expertise and by his appalled sense of betrayal and jealousy. This play is more obviously a vehicle for its stars. This is no bad thing considering the brilliance of Mark Rylance's acting and Iestyn Davies' singing; but too much is only sketched about the central radiance, and dramatic license is too liberally applied at the expense of historical likelihood.