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.