A Matter of Life and Death review – movie classic resuscitated with songs
The propaganda brief for Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger on A Matter of Life and Death was to come up with a film to help smooth postwar relations between Britain and the US. We could certainly do with a bit of that now, although to fix our current impasse would probably take more than a love affair between a fated British fighter pilot and a steely American radio operator.
It is a metaphysical story in which the life of Peter Carter (Thomas Dennis in the David Niven role) hangs on a heavenly court case and the love of June (Kaylah Copeland), whom he meets only after falling from the skies without a parachute. If this stage adaptation does not explain why we should revisit a story so deeply rooted in an era of loss, grief and reconciliation, it is no less intelligent and ambitious for it.
In a script loyal to the idiosyncratic original, writer and director Theresa Heskins makes one key intervention. Drawing on a large cast of actor-musicians, she punctuates the production with period songs, the better to capture the mood of melancholy and high spirits experienced by a generation stalked by death while being compelled to live in the moment.
That, at least, is the theory. Under Akintayo Akinbode's musical direction, the players are more sombre than celebratory, the vocals are often muted and even In the Mood has a maudlin air. The songs, though, are well chosen. The sentiments of numbers such as Blue Skies and When the Lights Go On Again fit the story's theme of hope for better times. 'We kiss and the angels sing,' croons Polly Lister, reflecting the blend of earthly and heavenly.
The director's fidelity to the movie includes its switches from Technicolor to monochrome. There is no naked Pan-like goatherd, but there is a foppish French revolutionary official (Michael Hugo) and a stairway to heaven ingeniously suggested by the illuminated spokes of Laura McEwen's rotating set. What is missing is a sense of purpose. It is a reverential adaptation that emulates the strangeness of the original without striking out with a similar boldness of its own.
At the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme, until 19 April
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