WHEN the curtain rises on The Score, the craggy features of Brian Cox as J. S. Bach peer into the audience. Later, when he dons his wig to leave home, it is as the embodiment of those 18th-century engravings, history come to life. Cox has set aside his modern media mogul, Logan Roy, in HBO’s Succession, to portray one of Europe’s greatest composers in a performance of depth and pathos.
The plot owes much to James Gaines’s 2005 book, Evening in the Palace of Reason, which details the trip made by Bach near the end of his life to visit Frederick the Great at his palace in Potsdam. Ostensibly bringing him there to survey the court keyboards, the 35-year-old musical monarch presents the older man with a 21-note theme to be adapted into a three-part fugue. This mettle-testing is mutual, as Bach wants to find out what Frederick is made of, and has first-hand experience himself of the barbarous Prussian troops in Leipzig.
Oliver Cotton’s deft script shows the foppish King Frederick — a capricious man-child in Stephen Hagan’s hands — to be more despot than enlightened, in spite of his friendship with the flamboyant honey-bear Voltaire (Peter De Jersey). His court is artistic, with many composers — including Bach’s ardent son Carl (Jamie Wilkes) — yet a place of intrigue and deceit. Bellicose, too; the muskets and cannons are never distant.
Just like Bach, Cox is a master of his craft, as he commandingly bestrides the action and politics. Bach is also an evangelist for his faith, which sparks Frederick and his “godless, shallow, irreligious” court. The fast, modern style there looks set to show Bach as old-hat, genius though he may be. But his faith makes him far more interesting, and sincere. Music, for him, is “a language which speaks of struggle and pain” — and, ultimately, redemption. Enlightenment ideas are no match for “the divine clockwork”. It is rare to see religion debated in such a sensitive and intelligent way on stage.
The first half has some longueurs, especially when the Frederick backstory is explained; and everything comes together after the interval — not least when the devout composer and callous king have a showdown. The female characters provide some relief to the constant male posturing. Nicole Ansari-Cox is tender as Anna Magdalena Bach, the loving wife, and Emilia, the court maid played by Juliet Garricks, brings welcome humanity and perspective.
Trevor Nunn directs. Robert Jones’s set and costumes give good Baroque and Rococo. Sophie Cotton’s sound design and original music ornament throughout. Bach turned the king’s notes into a whole, brilliant portfolio — “The Musical Offering” — before his sight failed him. The music lives on.
The Score runs at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, Haymarket, London SW1, until 26 April. Box Office: phone 020 7930 8800. trh.co.uk
