Holy Fool running 3 Sep – 10 Oct 2026
❚ A POWERFUL BLACK-AND-WHITE widescreen film version of Hamlet captured my interest in 1964 at the Academy cinema on Oxford Street because it was made in Russia, and shot mainly outdoors. Yes the minimal dialogue was in Russian, scripted partly by Shakespeare, partly by Boris Pasternak, and savagely truncated, but what thrilled my imagination throughout its mere 2h20mins was a gripping musical soundtrack written in mid-life by Dmitri Shostakovich, a composer unknown to me as a schoolboy. It never seemed to pause. I was smitten by its unique flavour, both wild and dignified, and dived into HMV to buy the only two Shostakovich albums selling there on a Russian vinyl label, inevitably…
Hooked on his music I was and hooked I remain. So this week am able to enthuse about a new drama at London’s Park200 theatre titled HOLY FOOL, which dramatises Shostakovich’s survival under Russia’s oppressive communist regime until his death in 1975… It is painfully convincing, if a bit too bitsy, and would benefit from being tightened before coming into the West End. And a major delight is to hear those oh-so-distinctive key passages of his music on a piano that surely needs to be played much more loudly. (Written by Rosalind Adler and Lea Sellers. Directed by Kate Fahy.)
➢➢ Shapers of the 80s ➣➣ 