Don shines with youthful exuberance

IS Cornwall’s Kneehigh Theatre the most exciting theatre company in the country? The answer is probably yes: no other group has its youthful attitude or flair.

This new work is very much a case in point: aimed squarely at a teenage audience (at least by the coach parties filling the stalls, and loving it) it takes the familiar story of the ultimate Hedonist, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, stuffs the characters into 1978’s Winter of Discontent (cue for several power cuts) and has the Don run riot with his sidekick, Nobby, in a small town.

This offers nice details: (Dona) Anna cares for her sick soldier-father and is married to a local, sexually inept vicar who bases his sermons on “Grease” and the Bee Gees; Nobby doesn’t keep Mozart’s famous list of the Don’s conquests but takes Polaroids and the Don’s conscience-free actions are fuelled by drink and drugs rather than malevolence and violence. All this is set on a visually brilliant mixture of cut-away steel shipment containers, lights that explode on cue, balloons and more, with songs and snatches of radio and music to open and close scenes.

But it’s not quite perfect: in turning the Don into less of a hellish force for sexual greed and murderous intent and more a sexy young guy out for some fun (which is certainly achieved by actor Gisli Orn Gardarsson), Kneehigh fails to fully realise the play’s cold-hearted core.

Which is also why the ending is also a bit of a letdown: rather than the Commendatore, Anna’s father, returning to drag the evil Don to hell, he merely appears in a dream and tells everyone that without “care”, there is nothing, which suggests that had he lived, he might have had a viable career in social work.

When the play is over, Kneehigh panders a little too much to its youthful audience by organising dancing to a Barry White number.

Taking care in the community a bit too far by then, perhaps, but it’s mostly a Hell of a trip.