Marc and Bella Chagall soar head over heels in love in Kneehigh Theatre and Bristol Old Vic’s magical chamber musical The Flying Lovers Of Vitebsk, the latest bit of U.K. theatrical wizardry to pay a visit to Beverly Hills’ Wallis Center For The Performing Arts.

Like last year’s 946: The Amazing Story Of Adolphus Tips, Daniel Jamieson’s The Flying Lovers Of Vitebsk turns fact into song-and-dance whimsy, this time focusing on 20th-century Russian artist extraordinaire Marc Chagall and his writer wife/muse Bella Rosenfeld in lives shaped both by their prodigious talents and by the world-altering events around them.

As Marc (Marc Antolin) finds inspiration in his Jewish heritage and love in a hometown girl, circumstances force him to abandon Bella (Daisy Maywood), if only temporarily, for the artistic allure of Paris circa 1910.

Back in Vitebsk for marriage, Marc’s planned return to France with wife and infant daughter ends up postponed a decade, first by World War I, then by the Russian Revolution, events that provide their own challenges to lives already tested not just by laws that make Jews second-class Russians but by pogroms intended to massacre as many of them as the government will allow or overlook.

The 1920s have Marc back in Paris where his expressionist-cubist career flourishes (and Bella’s less so due to marriage, motherhood, and cultural mores), that is until the Nazi threat makes escape to America the only solution to the more final one Hitler has planned.

International fame and fortune ensue, though not necessarily a storybook ending for Marc and his companion in life and love.

All of this would make for quite a movie or miniseries (think Dr. Zhivago as painter, not poet) with a budget in the tens if not hundreds of millions and the proverbial cast of thousands.

Playwright Jamieson and director Emma Rice (who played Marc and Bella in Flying Lovers’ earliest incarnation back in 1992) take a less costly, more theatrical approach, employing a mere four players (two of them musicians stepping in for a cameo here or there), stirring in bits of Tchaikovsky, Eastern European klezmer, and Ella Fitzgerald’s “I’m Making Believe,” integrating graceful movement and thrilling dance sequences choreographed by Rice and Etta Murfitt, and backing it all with a scenic design inspired by Chagall’s love of reds and yellows and greens and purples and blues (and the cows and roosters and fish he featured prominently in painting after painting).

Among director Rice and her design team’s many inspired touches is a traditional Jewish wedding horah that has Marc and Bella “hoisted” high atop chairs without a single extra in sight, a bottle dance that recalls Fiddler On The Roof (a musical incidentally inspired by a Chagall painting), Marc painting one his most famous canvasses with Bella’s hands emerging as those of “The Praying Jew,” and a sequence that has cast members sporting the artist’s trademark fish and fowl as headgear.

Scenic/costume designer Sophia Clist’s angular set recalls Chagall’s penchant for off-kilter angles in addition to allowing Marc and Bella to hold on to hanging ropes as if suspended in flight, and her costumes range from the Chagalls’ signature looks to some breathtakingly fanciful outfits, all of the above enhanced by Malcolm Rippeth’s ultra-vibrant lighting.

Composer-musical director Ian Ross underscores The Flying Lovers with a stunning instrumental soundtrack which he performs alongside James Gow on cello, piano, trumpet, accordion and mandolin; the melody to which Ross sets poet Rachel Korn’s “No One Knows It,” translated from Yiddish into English, proves particularly haunting; and Simon Baker provides an expert sound design throughout.

Above all there are The Flying Lovers’ two shooting stars.

With his black curls, expressive face, lithe graceful frame, and gorgeous tenor, Antolin (who created the role a year and a half ago at Bristol’s Old Vic) is the next best thing to having Marc Chagall live on stage, and just wait till the triple-threat executes high-flying dance moves that would do any Broadway gypsy proud.

Opposite Antolin, Maywood is not only a dead ringer for Bella in her short black bob, she plays the role with a piquant charm and sings every bit as stunningly as her chemistry-sharing leading man.

Keziah Serreau is assistant director. Aled William Thomas is production manager and Steph Curtis is company stage manager. Casting is by Georgia Simpson, CDG, and Lucy Taylor.

While Marc Chagall’s paintings have transformed him into an art world legend, his wife’s writings have made Bella considerably less of a literary name. The exquisite The Flying Lovers Of Vitebsk gives both Chagalls the attention and acclaim they are due.

Bram Goldsmith Theater, Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills. Through March 11. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays at 7:30. Saturdays and Sundays at 2:00 and 7:30.
www.thewallis.org

–Steven Stanley
February 24, 2018
Photos: Steve Tanner

Tags: Bristol Old Vic, Kneehigh Theatre, Los Angeles Theater Review, Wallis Annenberg Center For The Performing Arts