Cosima

Cosima by Sheena Lambert. Image by Susana Blanco

****

Behind every great man stands a greater woman responsible for his success. So the axiom goes, and Cosima Wagner would vehemently agree. True, she didn’t compose great operas like her vaunted husband, Richard Wagner, or musical compositions like her esteemed father, Franz Liszt, Cosima being Liszt’s illegitimate, yet acknowledged, daughter. Yet she was a formidable and ferocious woman with an indomitable spirit, whose ruthless business acumen ensured her husband’s legacy by way of the Bayreuth Festival, which celebrates Wagner even to this day. Sheena Lambert’s play, Cosima, offering a hop, skip and jump through selective details of Cosima’s life, interpreted so as to try reclaim and recast her as a feminist heroine. Ignoring her virulent anti-semitism, her deeply unpleasant fascist conservatism, her cruel, despotic tendencies in service to the memory of a man as means to vent her frustated ego. Attention to Cosima’s many failings deflected by way of another axiom; that behind every great woman there’s a man trying to drag her down. Allegedly her father, Liszt, and most other men she met, aside from Wagner who was more of a god. Lambert’s Daddy daughter dynamics creating further misdirection, making it the dominant motivation in Cosima’s life. Leaving Lambert to make numerous points but never a case for the real Cosima for playing fast and loose with inconvenient truths. Even so, Cosima still makes for an exceptional theatrical experience. Lambert’s modest tale made utterly marvellous by a magnificent performance from a mesmerising Mary Murray. So brilliant, you might well fall in love with this modern Miss Havisham, who wore widows clothes for the remainder of her life following Wagner's death.

Like The Woman in Black, a diminutive Murray seems shrunken in Victorian mourning wear, seated in a chair as Ride of the Valkyries plays. In one of the best curtain raisers this year Murray, with baton and scrapbook, sings notes as she flicks through pages. Fleeing to the dresser, she adjusts her hair, clothes and voice, transforming herself into other versions of Cosima. A feat regularly repeated as Cosima goes from innocent ingenue to unhappily married mother, passionate lover to embittered business woman. Her misjudged marriage giving way to an affair which gives way to another marriage, this time to Wagner. All the while Cosima's father haunts her. His withheld approval, or request for forgiveness, rolled out as reasons for Cosima’s frustrated bitterness. Cosima’s moral outrage at her unfeeling father viewed through a modern lens which Lambert cleverly incorporates by way of modern references. The end result a story of a self-willed, feminist who survived one form of tyranny and replaced it with another. Patriarchy replaced with a matriarchy after her own design. One, by all accounts, a jump from the frying pan into the fire.

As storytelling theatre, Cosima leaves much to be desired. Novelistic in structure, in the hands of a lesser performer it could feel like a reading of a half baked biography. Its essay like exploration omitting more than it includes, its story lacking real stakes or conflict to sink your teeth into, its selective chronology of a life crafted solely in service to the author's agenda. While there can be no doubt Bayreuth was a monumental achievement, Lambert’s framing of Cosima’s life proves economical with the truth. In the hands of director Rex Ryan, no serious questions are asked regards the rehabilitation of Cosima’s tawdry reputation, her links with Nazism dismissively glanced over. Instead, Ryan takes a theatrical defibrillator to Lambert’s tale and sends thousands of theatrical volts coursing through it. An electrifying Mary Murray sensational as a fantasy Cosima. A woman of joy, mischief, passion, grace, resilience and determination with ne'r a stain on her spotless soul. Murray’s performance an utter tour de force, elevated by Ryan’s energised direction. An unforgettable performance of a biography that should be taken with a pinch of salt. Yet you almost forgive it on account of the power and beauty of Murray’s performance. Which has seen Cosima’s run extended. But book soon, tickets are going fast, if not already sold out. Murray is simply not to be missed in one of the crowning performances of the year.

Cosima by Sheena Lambert, runs at Smock Alley Theatre until; July 26.

For more information visit Smock Alley Theatre