Poignant, funny, and completely absurd
Fanny, a play about the lesser-known sister of Felix Mendelssohn, is a potential tour de force that shot itself in the foot.
The first half combines satirical wit with biographical exposition. We begin with a bittersweet visual: Fanny stands bolt upright in her room, pretending to conduct an orchestra. She casts furtive glances at members of the audience, breaking the fourth wall as she transforms rows into sections – strings, brass, woodwind, percussion. Prior to any dialogue, Charlie Russell’s performance communicates a tantalising blend of strength and desperation. Behold the portrait of an ambitious woman with little hope! As soon as Paul enters, Fanny’s daydream disintegrates. ‘I was just combing my hair,’ she explains, dejected. It is the first in a series of domestic intrusions, all of which serve to remind her that she cannot live as her brother does, despite her talent. Female composers are no prize in nineteenth-century Europe; they are uncomfortable and threatening anomalies.
As the plot moves forwards, we are introduced to Lea, Rebecka and Felix Mendelssohn. Much of the light-hearted comedy centres around the mother, a no-nonsense matriarch who exasperates her daughter. Kim Ismay was born to play this role. She is just haughty enough to be funny, but not so haughty as to become two-dimensional. The script also gives her a decisive advantage, since Lea is arguably the most complicated character in the play. As a parent, she is both supportive and oppressive, balancing her maternal drive to nurture with a sharp awareness of social impossibility. She encourages Fanny to develop her musical gifts while denying her the possibility to dream. It is the love of a pragmatist.
So far, so good. The mother-daughter relationship is full of nuance. Unfortunately, this nuance is lacking elsewhere in the play. Forsterian wit slowly gives way to unbridled farce. Small antagonisms between siblings simmer until they boil over. There is brawling, yelling, door slamming. Subtlety is devoured by what feels like teenage angst. There is something satisfying about it at first, particularly when it is paired with the sisters’ defiant proto-feminism, but it quickly becomes overdone – tacky, even. Towards the end of the play, Rebecka seems to be doing very little besides ripping her clothes off and screaming. Just a touch of farce would have been far more effective than this wholesale descent into the absurd.
Then there is Felix’s self-flagellating epiphany in the final scene. The now-monstrous composer admits to being a petty ‘plagiarist’, a fiendishly jealous younger brother. Post-reformation, he makes room for his older sister in an act of verbal prostration. What we see here is the triumph of the underdog, and of womenkind; what a pity that this moment of triumph is so cheap. The play’s main message is that you can be more than one thing. Fanny can be a wife and a composer. She needn’t give up one in order to have the other. So, why does the play have to turn Felix into a bog-standard villain? Why does he have to become so ridiculous for Fanny to be taken seriously? Why do we have to choose one sibling?
Thankfully, the ending restores some of the work’s initial poignancy. Fanny, who has now built a life with Herr Hensel, is back in her room conducting an imaginary orchestra. The instruments come to life for a few bars, then quickly fall away. She is left conducting in silence, bewildered but determined. I will remember the pain of this ending.