The American pianist Oscar Levant used to be known as "the legendary Oscar Levant," chiefly on account of his caustic wit. A friend of his who was also a friend of Greta Garbo kept telling Garbo that she ought to meet him, but when the meeting finally took place, it was a disaster. Levant was overwhelmed by the occasion: first he was tongue-tied, then he made a series of bad jokes. Garbo turned to her friend and murmured: "It is better he remains a legend."
After seeing Martin Sherman's "When She Danced", at the Globe Theatre, I am beginning to feel the same way about the legendary Isadora Duncan.
Mr Sherman has set his play in Paris in 1923, when Isadora was past her prime. She is leading a dishevelled life with her husband, the young Russian poet Sergei Esenin, selling pieces of furniture to pay for the champagne, trying to raise money for her dance school in Moscow. Esenin cannot speak a word of English and she can-not speak a word of Russian; they get drunk and upset each other - but how they can love!
The action takes place in the course of a single day. Isadora has asked an Italian diplomat to dinner, in the hope of enlisting official Italian support for the dance school. It turns out, however, that he is only a filing clerk. How can she have made such mistake? Quite easily, since she is so out of touch that she also has to be told that Italy is now ruled by someone called Mussolini.
Never mind the story, though. It is chiefly an excuse for displays of temperament. Esenin swings from the chandelier (literally), stages a ludicrous suicide attempt, throws some outrageous fits of pique, comes back looking cute and begging for forgiveness. Isadora, when she is not being inspired, is either kooky and whacky, or tearful and tragic. They both work hard at being geniuses together.
They can also be ruthless (it is one of the points of the play) in their treatment of non-geniuses. Poor vulnerable Miss Belzer, for instance, a dowdy refugee whom they hire as an interpreter. Esenin gets rid of her out of wounded vanity, and though Isadora shows some fleeting sympathy, she cannot really be bothered with her.
But if we are not meant to find the two of them entirely admirable, we are meant to find them wonderful. Isadora in particular. She is a free spirit; when the creative mood is on her, a goddess.
Lesser characters pay rapt tribute to the life-transforming effect of watching her dance, and she proclaims her own credo after recovering from the anguish of seeing a young acolyte trying to imitate her, and getting it all wrong. You must express yourself, she tells her, perform "your own great leaps and bounds." The trouble is that the poor girl's cavortings have been so grotesque - modern dance as it might be parodied in cheap revue sketch - that it is hard to take anything that follows very seriously.
But then the whole play abounds in caricature. Who could believe that this Isadora was all the things the real Isadora is supposed to have been, or that this Esenin was an important poet? Artists may often lead messy lives, but they generally have something formidable about them as well.
It has to be said that Vanessa Redgrave, as Isadora, plays the part as though she were totally convinced by it. Nor did I ever find myself doubting the sincerity of the Soviet actor Oleg Menshikov, who plays Esenin.
The best performance of the evening comes from Frances de la Tour, as Miss Belzer: she infuses genuine pathos and dignity into what might easily have been a stereotyped role.

Submitted by Jane Grey