Bach and forth

We should be mightily relieved whenever Brian Cox chooses to devote months to the stage. Basking in the spotlight since that masterful portrayal of Succession’s Logan Roy, the veteran actor’s regular celebrity appearances away from the day  job generally involve badmouthing former co-stars or revelling in  that increasingly tiresome role of sweary grandfather for fawning  media hosts. Putting such nonsense to one side, the prospect of  Cox instead returning to his rightful West End stamping ground, as he nears 80, appears an altogether more fitting use of the old show pony’s energies. 

Cast as Johann Sebastian Bach in Oliver Cotton’s The Score, now at Theatre Royal Haymarket following a 2023 run in Bath, the premise appears compelling enough: loosely based on the historical account of devout Bach’s battle of wills with the  godless Frederick the Great when a reluctant guest at the King’s  palace in Potsdam. While Nina Raine’s previous 2021 offering, Bach & Sons at The Bridge, ended up being weighed down by a wide-ranging and ultimately laboured plot, Cotton’s  comparatively economical approach, focusing on those few days in May 1747, would seem more likely to pack a punch. Yet, what follows proves a frustratingly muddled affair. 

Early scenes move along in functional, light comedic fashion. Possessing the stagecraft that comes with an actor of his calibre and vintage, Cox is content to play it safe, comfortably  showboating without ever threatening to inhabit the bones; his  strongest card initially being cantankerous Bach’s doddery state  compared to younger, vampiric hosts. The trio of schemers playing court musicians Quantz, Benda and Graun, in on the King’s plot to flummox “old Bach”, are pleasing diversion enough; while Jamie Wilkes’ portrayal of Bach’s son Carl, riddled with the stress of navigating Frederick’s hazardous court as the King’s harpsichordist, strikes a convincing chord. Peter De Jersey’s Voltaire somehow manages to be a consistently pointless presence throughout; maid Emilia, though solidly delivered by Juliet Garricks, increasingly grates as the piece’s occasional moral compass. 

Proceedings regrettably aren’t enhanced by the arrival of the  play’s other protagonist. Though portraying the many facets of  warmongering, flautist, homosexual, culture vulture Frederick is  no small feat, Stephen Hagan turns up disappointingly light and  dandy, never quite to recover. Should Cotton have opted to  deliver a rompish drawing room comedy, such choices (albeit  with more laughs) would probably ensure a perfectly satisfying evening; yet that’s not what we’re signed up for. By act two, we instead lurch towards weightier matters: those of one great man’s faith against another’s military might; Bach’s belief in the “divine spark” opposed to the King’s ruthless rationale. With foundations never laid for more profound and enduring arguments to follow, momentum proves elusive. It remains hard to comprehend that neither Cotton nor director Trevor Nunn saw such problems ahead. 

The core of the play: Frederick’s failed attempt to humiliate his elderly guest by devising a theoretically impregnable musical  theme, from which Bach must improvise a three-part fugue, rarely threatens to transcend the mood of dastardly jape. When theological debate ensues, neither fellow seems truly willing to  engage: while Bach half-heartedly rambles on about “music translating God’s words to the soul” Frederick’s counterattacks more resemble those of an ill-prepared sixth former (the King is  35). “Oh, for God’s sake!” eventually exclaims our exasperated  royal — cue sudden sound of thunder and audience chortles. Oh dear. 

Cox predictably appears on firmer ground berating the King about the savagery of his Prussian troops, highlighting the rape of a  teenage girl in his home city of Leipzig. The moment cries out for the composed, cold-eyed menace of the all-conquering  monarch, viewing such inevitable events with dispassion; this Frederick instead huffs and puffs, lamely suggesting we “take  circumstances into account”. Hardly aided by the mechanically delivered backstory of the psychotic father, the sight of Frederick blubbing on briefly realising the futility of it all wholly fails to convince. A potentially impressive on-stage presence, Hagan doubtless possesses far more in his own armoury – here, he’s given little room for manoeuvre. 

Praise is however due to the one undoubted star of the evening: Robert Jones’s sumptuous, revolving 18th century set. Gracefully transporting us between Frederick’s opulent court and Bach’s  rustic, Lutheran abode, it’s a joy to behold throughout. And it’s back home where Cox truly proves most at ease; down in the  main to the ailing composer’s endearing couple of scenes with  wife Anna, ably portrayed by the Scot’s real-life spouse Nicole Ansari-Cox. 

One last attempt to demonstrate the man’s greatness, a highly problematic theme throughout, comes in the play’s final moments: as Bach sits, blindfolded following a botched eye operation (eventually the death of him), Carl marvels at his father’s triumphant Musical Offering to the King; a spellbinding response to Frederick’s subsequent demand for a seemingly impossible six-part fugue, after his original three-part fugue challenge has been met. With the results beyond anything this petulant monarch could hope to comprehend, Carl informs us the King never deigned to give it a listen. 

But by now Bach and Frederick’s time together has passed — and this sadly disjointed affair leaves us still wondering what all the fuss could really have been about.