The Bay At Nice Paints A Picture Of Disappointed Hopes

The Bay at Nice, Menier Chocolate Factory ★★★☆☆

By Neil Dowden Last edited 60 months ago

Looks like this article is a bit old. Be aware that information may have changed since it was published.

The Bay At Nice Paints A Picture Of Disappointed Hopes The Bay at Nice, Menier Chocolate Factory 3
Photo: Catherine Ashmore

Though nothing like the barbed rivalry of their formidable characters in Downton Abbey, Dames Maggie Smith and Penelope Wilton will soon be going head to head on the London stage. Smith is about to open in Christopher Hampton’s new monologue A German Life at the Bridge Theatre, while Wilton heads the cast in a revival of David Hare’s 1986 play The Bay at Nice at the Menier Chocolate Factory.

Hare’s drama is set in 1956 in Leningrad’s Hermitage Museum, three years after the death of Stalin. Wilton plays the grand dame Valentina Nrvoka who has been asked for her opinion on the authenticity of a painting allegedly by Matisse (who taught her as a young art student in 1920s Paris). But she is also met there by her estranged daughter Sophia who wants her support in divorcing her Communist Party husband to be with a much older man.

Photo: Catherine Ashmore

Hare packs a lot into 75 minutes in a play of ideas about art, politics, love and family, in which self-fulfilment is set against self-sacrifice, and individualism against collectivism.

The genuineness of differing ways of life is questioned, with Valentina having turned her back on her bohemian life in the West to return home to a post-revolutionary Russia that has proved far from utopian — including the all-pervasive socialist realism that has snuffed out her painting career.

There’s a lot of talk and not much action in a rather static scenario, but Richard Eyre’s elegant direction ensures our attention is engaged, while Fotini Dimou’s set has a suitably grand cultural ambience.

Photo: Catherine Ashmore

Ophelia Lovibond does well as the dissatisfied but determined Sophia, but it is Wilton who is the star attraction with her acidly funny put-downs and subtly hinted regrets in another imposing stage performance — even the Dowager Countess of Grantham would be impressed.

The Bay at Nice, Menier Chocolate Factory, 553 Southwark Street, SE1 1RU. Tickets £39.50–£42.50, until 4 May 2019.

Last Updated 22 March 2019