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We are also greeted in Richard Jones's production of Tales from

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We are also greeted, in Richard Jones's production of Tales from the Vienna Woods, by a brass band and small crowd of Tyrolean locals in traditional gear - lederhosen and long socks - all swaying to the musicians' nostalgic harmonies. Yet this realm is, in fact, overwhelmingly gloomy: a cavernous black void where everybody is caught in low, washed-out rays of light. Downstage right looms another enlarged postcard showing us the silhouette of a castle in the forested Wachau district. We gather that Alfred, who is a mercenary young cad, was reared at the foot of this grand ruin by his ambitious peasant mother, and now he's become a roving buck and gambler amongst Vienna's bourgeois shopkeepers.

Other waltzes and "golden oldie" tavern songs weave through the playwright's short scenes, which point to moral hypocrisies, decadence, and potential political horrors. You might compare it to pre-revolutionary Chekhov, only Horv?'s Viennese vision is more tarnished and twisted, an anti-romance, a social comedy that becomes disillusioned and very dark indeed. Not only does Alfred (Joe Duttine) exploit the ageing, tarty tobacconist Valerie (Frances Barber), but as various neighbours abandon themselves to lusty frolics by the Danube, Valerie carelessly seduces Erich, a young Nazi. Meanwhile the naive shop girl Marianne, having fallen wildly in love with Alfred, is dragged down into destitution and loses her child, and ends in unbearable despair.

This play is, in many ways, intensely modern, shot through with satirically droll and poignant naturalistic details.That said, Jones's production is peculiarly hit and miss. It is exhilarating to see a bold, spare, avant-garde set with a continental feel in the Olivier. As a designer-cum-director, Jones creates haunting images on an operatic scale, building up a kind of open-plan symphony of small lives. There are droll bits of invention too, not least dive-bombing swimmers vanishing, with synchronised sploshes, into the stage pit The emotional impact at other points is devastating. Barber's screaming grief, when she sees what has happened to Marianne, is raw and shocking. David Harrower's new translation - though not that different from Christopher Hampton's - has some vibrant mouthiness, while Nicola Walker's sallow but passionately burning Marianne is superb.Unfortunately, the cast is uneven and Duttine's Alfred is a thorough bore, hollering every line. Generally, the grand echoing space drains the production of vitality.

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