Ben and Imo: Mark Ravenhill

Swan Theatre, RSC, Stratford Upon Avon

Runs: 2h 15m, one interval, until 6 April 2024

AD Performance, 23 March 2024

5✩✩✩✩✩ Review: Roderick Dungate.

“Totally thrilling.”

I have seen big plays with big casts, small plays with little casts, but Mark Ravenhill’s Ben and Imo is a great big play with a cast of just two; and how marvellous they are.

The RSC’s Swan Theatre is the ideal place for this intimate work exploring the relationship between Benjamin Britten and Imogen Holst as Britten composes his Elizabeth II coronation commission Gloriana, the tale of Elizabeth I’s love affair with Essex. We see in the play that Britten could be notoriously unpredictable while composing and frequently treated Imogen Holst as an unpaid servant. But their relationship was nuanced, complex and (to us, maybe) puzzling.

Ravenhill’s script is sparce, within a relatively narrow range, though, he creates mountains and ravines. But it offers little obvious clues to the actors. In an interview elsewhere on ReviewsGate Samuel Barnett describes it as ‘brilliantly difficult’.

Both Samuel Barnett (Britten) and Victoria Yeates (Holst) are absolutely superb.

Barnett’s Britten is tense, wound up tight; Yeates’s Holst is open, she absorbs Britten’s emotional punches but is also able to hold her own. With huge energy this Holst draws matching energy out of Britten, liberating him in fits and starts. This could not be clearer than when she has Britten swooping around his room as a seagull.

Frightening emotional outburst explode like grenades almost out of the blue; it could seem forced, but with consummate skill these two actors underpin it with great truth. There is nowhere to hide in the Swan, and the two never let up on their truth for a second. This is thrilling acting.

Ravenhill’s script must be acknowledged as the platform on which this work rests, but the skill with which director Erica Whyman orchestrates the whole is most accomplished.

The play is about the nature of the two people’s relationship during Britten’s painful creative process. What I greatly like though, is the play has edge. It could be seen that the emotional cruelty (partnered by the deep love) is a necessary part of the creative process. This is not a comfortable truth, but it is realistic. The play and the team offer no resolution of this conundrum; but that, too, is right; plays should open up big questions and leave us to talk about them later, which this exciting work does in exuberant style.

Samuel Barnett interview with Rod Dungate

Cast

Benjamin Britten: Samual Barnett

Imogen Holst: Victoria Yeates

Creatives

Director: Erica Whyman

Set and Costume design: Soutra Gilmour

Lighting Designer: Jackie Shemesh

Sound Designer: Carolyn Downing

Audio Description: Emily Magdu, Carolyn Smith