“The Seven Acts Of Mercy” by Anders Lustgarten originally premiered at the RSC a few years ago. It is now being revived by new Liverpool-based company Grasp The Nettle Productions, and will be performed repeatedly over the next two years as part of a larger project. Its main theme is compassion in a compassionless world: - a very hard-hitting topic, and with a lot of Merseyside relevance. This evening’s performance took place in the studio theatre of the Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts.
Rachel Jones’ design immediately set up the plural worlds of both an artist’s studio in Naples, 1606, and a nicely-kept council house in Bootle in the present day. A large see-through painter’s canvas dominated the former, and draped material at the back also doubled as a projection screen for the multi-media elements, displaying television footage of horse racing, modern smartphone photos, and Caravaggio’s finished masterpiece painting: “The Seven Acts Of Mercy.”
Stomping around his studio was Charlie De’Ath as Caravaggio: belligerent, anti-social, and working on his new commission. Like any northern Italian of the Renaissance, he spoke in full Liverpudlian. His intellectual patron Marchese, (a pernickety Onur Orkut), dropped in sometimes to check on its progress and try to convert Caravaggio to the religious view, which Caravaggio, embittered by a harsh life where his models were raped and murdered in back alleys and he had to conceal his own homosexuality by painting endless biblical scenes of beheadings (the punishment for sodomy), vehemently rejected. Softening began when it turned out another model, Lavania, (Leah Gould shone in this role, and was dazzling with Liverpudlian vivacity), had been teaching herself to paint as well, and wanted to escape her life of poverty and prostitution through it. Her suggestions changed the nature of the painting, and “The Seven Acts Of Mercy” as we now know it started to appear. Caravaggio’s guard became so relaxed he even invited a young man home, (a laconically dissolute Theo Nate) – but it turned out to be quite the mistake.
Inter-spliced with this candle-lit world of reds and golds was the harsh grey kitchen-sink drama story of today. A retired dock worker, Leon (gruffly yet sympathetically played by James McMartin), and his wary teenage granddaughter Mickey (an assured Shannon McFadden), were dealing with the visit of a smiling council housing officer (an almost unflappable Gillian Lewis.) The council’s budget had been slashed by federal government; the council in desperation were selling off all their nicer properties; and as Leon had six months to live and his back cupboard had just been reclassified as a “spare bedroom”, his home of the last fifty years was now being targeted. Stormy Renaissance Naples was being equated with the harshness of Merseyside’s “regeneration” drive.
As the little family thrashed around for a solution, Leon shared his book on Caravaggio with Mickey, and “The Seven Acts Of Mercy” caught her imagination. Armed with the camera on her phone, she went out to make seven acts of mercy of her own, with pictures. “Feed The Hungry” led to Sam Richardson’s matter-of-fact foodbank volunteer and a very heartfelt performance from Jonathan Somerville as a claimant named Damian, who cried out that somewhere, there is a comfortable and faceless bureaucrat who has sentenced him to literally starve. “Shelter The Homeless” became an offer of the back cupboard to quietly focused Natalie Vaughan and charming Pete O’Keeffe’s youthful sister and brother: – the former desperate with worry because the latter’s spectrum disability was not ticking off the right symptoms to keep his benefits. “Clothe The Naked” became Mickey finding Damian again to offer him a warm coat….. and indirectly, that leading to her featuring in her own photograph: “ Visit The Imprisoned.”
Weaving their way through the same society were two local hard men: the mercurial Prime (Theo Nate once more), and his fake-tanned yet muscular friend Razor (played with relish by Paul Moorcroft.) Their new boss turned out to be Mickey’s returning father Lee (performed with both Machiavellian selfishness and brittle vulnerability by Sam Donavon.) Their new task: to “help” Merseyside authorities remove tenants from the nicer properties.
In cameo roles were Gemma Dodgson as a brave aspiration-preaching politician, Claire Robinson and Darren Johnson as a bickering couple with a gambling problem, and an unseen team of make-up artists plastering realistic wounds and blood on both the residents of Naples and Merseyside. The stark score of austere electronic chords was composed by Adam Handford; and everything was lovingly and feelingly directed by Jake Norton.
Reviewer - Thalia Terpsichore
on - 4/6/19
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