Dock Street Theatre, Charleston
June 9, 2018

The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk isn’t the first work about an artist and his muse, and it’s unlikely to be the last. Turning painting into theatre – or even opera and musical theatre – is a rich seam, but rarely does it come off as well, and as seemingly effortlessly, as in the latest offering by Kneehigh, the ever-inventive Cornish theatre company whose work (Brief Encounter, Tristan & Yseult and The Red Shoes) has toured theatres and festivals across Australia in the recent past.

Marc Antolin in The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk. Photo © Steve Tanner

The trick is twofold: one, to give living, visual life to a fundamentally static artform; and two, to make the muse – who often doubles as ‘humble’ model – as interesting as the invariably eccentric (and often egocentric) artist. Emma Rice’s economical, yet endlessly imaginative production – her last for Kneehigh before her ill-fated departure to helm Shakespeare’s Globe – achieves the first of these through the simplest of means – costume, a splash of light, pairs of shoes suggesting the Holocaust – as well as a multi-talented cast who sing,...