Jeff Shankley and Dean John-Wilson in A Mirrored Monet at the Charing Cross Theatre, London. Picture: Pamela Raith Photography
A Mirrored Monet continues until 9 May 2026 at the Charing Cross Theatre, London.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
Christian Durham’s new production of Carmel Owen’s vision of the explosion of French impressionism on the European art world stretches convincingly from Pucciniesque scenes of life and love among bohemians through Merchant Ivory-style mise en scène idylls to a bare studio witnessing the psychological trauma of a Freudian talking cure complete with dreams and nightmares.
All of this external and internal action is well directed by Durham and illuminated by key artworks. Although the set design reconstructs a gallery, and uses a miniature revolving stage, audience experience is front-on which works against a fully immersive experience bathed in patterns of colour and light.
While onlookers are never fully ‘Out Here in the Light’, there is inventive use of projection from video designer Matt Powell. Like the frequent picnics ‘en plein air’, the stage management led by Adam Moore-White ensures that the action proceeds without a hitch.
The plot of A Mirrored Monet centres on the twinning of elderly Claude Monet with his younger self – a version of the how-it-started versus how-it’s-going palindromic meme.
Whereas young Monet is very much living in a present where he struggles to survive physically, emotionally and artistically, the old Monet is state protected but obsessed with his past wrongs to the extent that he has become frozen. A series of flashbacks progress to a head-to-head between Jeff Shankley as the older man who challenges Dean John-Wilson as the younger. Both actors fully own the stage.
Owen’s approach to Monet’s creative breakdown at the end of his life and her emphasis on resolving human struggle as the key to releasing imagination is sparked by the pressure of a visit from the younger modernist Matisse (who sadly never appears) – and French dignitaries who are coming to view the commissioned ‘Water Lilies’.
Inviting the audience in to this reflection is prompted by old Monet breaking the fourth wall exclaiming: “How did you get into my studio?” Presumably this is a sign of his instability, that he is seeing things and hearing voices, or is it an assumption that audiences will bring perspectives from today, and that we are also being invited to appreciate his art and that of his modern associates? Another mirror perhaps.
It’s well worth a visit to this intimate theatre underneath the arches where real trains bumping overhead blend into the soundscape of France in the midst of the Great War. Fine casting by Jane Deitch, strong period costuming from Libby Todd and consistently convincing characterisation brighten this show. The acting is engaging throughout. There are some shining vocal performances, notably from beautiful Brooke Bazarian, making a very strong stage debut as Camille.
The gorgeous luminous score reflects Owen’s recollection that music leapt out at her from Monet’s work with force and rhythm. A variety of emotionally-responsive aural backdrops are adeptly executed by Michael Webborn’s lively band, supported by sound designer Andy Johnson. The sheer beauty of much of the higher woodwind writing is especially evocative.
Songs punctuate, sometimes moving the action on, but at other times breaking the flow when it’s not always clear a scene is meant to be funny or serious. The performers could do more to steer the emotions through tone of voice.
The successful portrayal of the authoritative pedantry of the French salon in ‘I Was Important Then’, with its most artful use of bass clarinet from Steven Serlin as the Marquis, is one example of successful articulation of meaning. At the same time it mocks the defection of critic Leroy (John Addison) which shook the art world and prompted the song.
There is more than a hint of a feminist stance in this unravelling of Monet as a man voyeuristically fixated on his model, mistress, first wife and mother of his children, Camille. On the one hand, Monet’s revaluation of past events constructs Camille as the crucial link between past and present, elevating her beyond the cliché of model/muse/wife.
It is she who is awakened from the dead as the glorious ‘Woman With a Parasol’ to literally hand her husband a massive paint brush in 1916, mirroring the one she had refused to locate at the point where she leaves him. Camille’s only solo number, ‘There Are No Stars’, supports her isolation in the London lodgings in 1871 in the environs of this theatre.
On the other hand, incongruity exists between the noble ideas behind revisioning this great male artist and his inclusive ideology that “art must reflect the people” through retrospective recognition of his misogynistic behaviour. In this context the flippancy of some of the humorous songs with rhyming couplets don’t always hit the mark and deny a more serious sense of Camille: “Did I see her with Renoir, or maybe at a bar?”
Camille’s abandonment of her husband is shown less as a challenge and more as a desire for home comforts, access to family money and the avoidance of soggy fish and chips in the fog!
Camille is essentially portrayed through Monet’s eyes and even in the scenes where she is away from him it is his imagining. Monet comes over as single-minded, a bit of a freeloader, even a victim, and this show encourages us to think of him and his art as redeemed by love. But the audience witnesses the challenge from the dislike of Camille’s loyal female friend Suzanne (Natalie Day) and the sister who never appears. We learn from conversation with step daughter/daughter-in-law Blanche (also Day) that Monet destroyed Camille’s diaries so now her perspectives are lost.
Monet’s emotional distress reiterates that Camille remains his constant strength, even in death, and this overrides the dilemma that he let her down; art wins out and we are led to believe that her difficult life was all fine really because of all the images of her that are left for posterity.
Literally, Camille as the first wife is contained in the attic once the second wife comes along and is only – by implication – free today as her images are in the world’s galleries. That Monet remains a traditional male artist, however hard he tries to see things from a woman’s perspective, is only strengthened by his apparent disinterest in Blanche’s career as an artist. Monet freezes out this younger protegee just as Camille is pinned in time by her parasol. And yet by denying Blanche the attic which she desires as a studio, perhaps this suggests the different future that she faced out in the real world?
In places the chronology works against the portrayal of mental breakdown so parts of Act I falter. The psychological focus as narrative driver also tends to override the imaginative magic of Monet’s impressionism which only occasionally really glows. But by the last scene a balance is definitely achieved.
There is much to admire about this colourful and charming show which offers a really good evening out for art lovers and their friends.
Charlotte Purkis
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