Theatre review: A Funny Valentine

Published on Thursday 2 July 2009 18:57

A FUNNY VALENTINE **** BIRNAM ARTS & CONFERENCE CENTRE, BIRNAM, PERTHSHIRE

MIKE Maran's dramatisation of the story of jazz trumpeter Chet Baker is pitched somewhere between theatre piece, concert and storytelling session, and combines all these elements in absorbing and entertaining fashion.

Maran stalks the stage in a white suit as the narrator, who in turn is a personification of a major factor in Baker's troubled but artistically productive life.

A simple set provides a frame for the narrative, which opens with the trumpeter's death in Amsterdam in 1988, and tracks back and forth through his life, returning frequently to his imprisonment in Lucca in Tuscany in 1961.

It is a poignant, moving and often poetic tale, in which Maran unpicks some of the myths surrounding the trumpeter (many seeded by Baker himself), and provides a highly sympathetic account of his achievements in thrall to the twin driving forces of his existence – music and heroin.

His trump card lies in the on-stage collaboration with two of Scotland's best jazz musicians, trumpeter Colin Steele (a Baker expert) and pianist David Milligan. Music is an almost constant presence, whether as the focal point of the action or as a muted complement to Maran's words (which have their own musical rhythms and timing in any case), and adds immeasurably to the emotional impact.

It plays in Dundee tonight and Musselburgh tomorrow, and will feature as part of a focus on Baker in the opening weekend of the Edinburgh Jazz Festival.