Christopher Staines, Peter de Jersey, Toby Webster, Matthew Romain, and Brian Cox. Photo by Teresa Castracane.
There is fertile ground for drama in the curious history of famous people who we knew once met but don’t know what they talked about. In recent years, I have seen such plays about Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald chatting with Ernest Hemingway, and Jim Morrison meeting with Steve McQueen. These shows were small and successful.
…a beautiful, often witty production…
Oliver Cotton’s “The Score,” a visiting Theatre Royal Bath production at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Sidney Harman Hall, posits an encounter or two between an aging Johann Sebastian Bach and the young and ambitious Frederick II of Prussia. It’s on a grander scale than those others, but does not work nearly as well.
There is certainly much to enjoy in the staging by Trevor Nunn, the mega musical mastermind who knows how to stage a spectacle. Robert Jones’s set and costumes draw a sharp line between Bach’s earthy household and the gilded, martial splendor of Frederick’s court. Johanna Town’s lighting, with its steady glow of windows, suggests the watchful presence of a higher power. Nunn stages it all with assurance, though the polish reads more commercial than probing. It covers the script’s weaknesses rather than fixing them.
The evening’s real star is Stephen Hagan, whose Frederick evokes Hugh Laurie’s haughty and daffy George IV from BBC’s “Blackadder.” Hagan swaggers and struts with comedic charm, which makes his later defense of mayhem and war crimes all the more chilling. Jamie Wilkes is solid as Bach’s son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, and Juliet Garricks brings feeling to the servant Emelia.
This makes Brian Cox’s performance, the evening’s main draw, all the more surprising. At his best, Cox delivers exactly what the role demands: true rage and passion, a man whose moral fury finally boils over. Those flashes are electric and remind you what he can do. They are also the exception. Too often his Bach feels oddly detached, as if the actor were a bit uninterested in the proceedings, and he occasionally stumbles over a line in a way that breaks the spell. It’s an uneven, underpowered showing from a performer who has spent a career commanding rooms.
Cotton’s script does not help. Seemingly significant threads appear and vanish such as Bach’s ailing daughter, a reason to stay home in the first scene who never comes up again. The middle drifts into a wager over whether Bach can improvise a three-voice fugue on the king’s theme, played for farce by three, bumbling court composers. When Bach finally confronts Frederick about Prussian soldiers who assaulted a blind young woman in Leipzig, the moment lacks urgency because the play has set the issue aside for so long. The extended debate that follows keeps circling the same points.
The tone lurches from comedy to grim material without transition. A scene about the costs of war reaches for weight it hasn’t earned, making the ending rushed and unsatisfying. This is a beautiful, often witty production, made memorable by Hagan, in service of a play that can’t decide what it wants to say.
Running Time: Two hours and 45 minutes with one 20-minute intermission.
Advisory: Extended discussions of military and domestic violence, including sexual violence against a child. Theatrical haze.
“The Score” runs through October 25, 2026 at the Sidney Harman Hall at Shakespeare Theatre Company, 610 F Street NW, Washington, DC 20004. For more information and to purchase tickets, call the Box Office at 202.547.1122, 7 days a week, 12–6 pm (the Box Office windows remain open until curtain time), or go online.
