Holy Fool running 3 Sep – 10 Oct 2026
❚ A POWERFUL BLACK-AND-WHITE widescreen film version of Hamlet captured my interest in 1965 on Oxford Street at the Academy cinema’s annual Shakespeare summer season because it was made in Russia, and shot mainly outdoors in the wild. Yes as Gamlet, directed by Grigoriy Kozintsev, the minimal dialogue was in Russian, scripted partly by Shakespeare, partly by Boris Pasternak, and savagely truncated compared with many Hamlets that can run to four hours. 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. The music never seemed to pause, responding to the magnificent power of the cinematography.
I was smitten by the music’s unique flavour, both wild and dignified, so dived into the nearby HMV store to buy the only two Shostakovich albums selling there on the Russian vinyl label, Melodiya… One was his sixth symphony conducted by Yevgeni Mravinsky for the Leningrad Philharmonic orchestra. The other was his monumental and deeply emotional eighth symphony conducted by Kiril Kondrashin for the Moscow Philharmonic, which reflects the tragedy and bitterness of World War Two. It filled both sides of the vinyl disc, and today is regarded by many as his finest.
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 until his death in 1975 under Russia’s oppressive Soviet regime, notably Stalin’s… The chronological script delivers pain but there’s precious little character development for the thoughtful Shostakovich (Benjamin O’Mahony) as “our very own Soviet Mozart”, a warm wife Nina (Jenna Augen) and the fictitious Katya (Phoebe Pryce). It’s all far too bitsy and would benefit from being considerably tightened before coming into the West End, which it nevertheless should do.
A major delight is to hear those oh-so-distinctive key passages of music on a piano that surely needs to be played much more loudly and be repositioned to allow us to see it being played. (Written by Rosalind Adler and Lea Sellers. Directed by Kate Fahy.)
Holy Fool: Benjamin O’Mahony plays while Phoebe Pryce dances. (Photo by Piers Foley)
