Review: Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

There’s some­thing so delight­ful about going into a theatre show com­pletely blind. I knew noth­ing about this play, had read noth­ing about it, all I knew was the charm­ing aes­thet­ic of the pub­li­city pho­tos and the fact that this was a New Zea­l­and premiere.

Cap­tain Corel­li’s Man­dolin is a true telling of the per­petu­ity of love amongst ter­rible strife, but it’s so much more than that. Over two hours a very var­ied cast invite us into the lives of those liv­ing on the island of Kefa­lo­nia dur­ing its Itali­an and Ger­man occu­pa­tion in the Second World War.

On the island, Pela­gia (Ava Wiszniewska) and Man­dras (Richard Cor­ney) are in love, until the the war drags Man­dras away. Itali­an sol­dier Carlo (Rio Futschek Ryan) has a deep desire for his fel­low sol­dier Francesco (Finni­an Nacey), while the war rages on and they’re forced to fight. As the Itali­ans occupy Kefa­lo­nia, Pela­gia finds her eye caught by the eponym­ous Cap­tain Corelli (Jonny Mar­shall), who brings a bit of music­al light to the war-scarred land.

Cap­tain Corel­li’s Man­dolin is brought to life by its power­ful dir­ect­ing. Dir­ect­ors Ewen Cole­man and Stan­ford Reyn­olds cre­ate gor­geous stage pic­tures with­in this piece, helped along sig­ni­fic­antly by the excel­lent light­ing (Devon Heaphy) and sound design (Tommy Joass), immers­ing us thor­oughly in the world of Kefa­lo­nia. A scene where Man­dras, trapped in the end­less night­mare of war, walks through a red-illu­min­ated bat­tle­field, sticks par­tic­u­larly in my mind – excel­lently designed, scored and per­formed by all.

The cast brings strong per­form­ances to the table, from a wide vari­ety of act­ors, a sig­ni­fic­ant bunch of whom are still at high school. Wiszniewska gives Pela­gia a stub­born fier­iness that lends itself very well to the char­ac­ter, Cor­ney jumps between man in love to man scarred with great tal­ent, and Mar­shall, I’m sure, has all of us nearly fall­ing in love with him by the end.

Alister Wil­li­ams plays Ian­nis, Pela­gi­a’s fath­er, with a lovely ground­ing, speak­ing a lot of wider truth to the audi­ence in a way that nev­er feels forced or overtly expos­i­tion­al. I’d like to also make men­tion of the anim­al roles in the play – the Goat (Geor­gia Dav­en­port) and Psipsina (Gil­bert Levack) – who are delight­ful to watch – the two act­ors have stun­ning com­mit­ment and bring excel­lent phys­ic­al­ity to their per­form­ances.

A script that is in four lan­guages (Eng­lish, Itali­an, Greek and Ger­man) is nev­er easy, but for the most part the cast takes to it with aplomb, set­tling us right with­in the bounds of Kefa­lo­nia in a way that feels nat­ur­al. The fab­ulous singing, live music on stage and set design all add to the feel­ing of the world, and it would be a much less life-filled show without it. The excel­lent ensemble cast helps the work along too, act­ing adapt­ably as townspeople, sol­diers and dol­phins when the need arises.

Cap­tain Corel­li’s Man­dolin is a play about love in all its forms, and it shines its best when that ten­der­ness is brought to the crowd. Though I believe that per­haps the play suf­fers a little in its under-por­tray­al of the dark­er parts of the script, the joy and life run­ning through­out the rest is heart­felt and equally heart­warm­ing.

I really liked it. I think you will too.

Cap­tain Corel­li’s Man­dolin is being per­formed at the Gryphon Theatre in Wel­ling­ton until the 10th of April. There are only a hand­ful of tick­ets left for the entire sea­son, so snap them up here.

Show con­tains strobe light­ing, depic­tions of war and viol­ence.