Leonardo

Could Leonardo ever have been as wracked by the uncertainty and self-doubt Mr. Turner invests in his role? It might contradict the image we have of Leonardo, but Mr. Turner's portrayal makes for a better character. ... "Leonardo" the show has an intelligence that "Leonardo" the concept might not lead one to expect.

There is an attempt to psychoanalyse Leonardo, whose father abandoned him. But this feels like a quick sketch rather than the fuller portrait one of history’s greatest minds surely merits.

You could say that Leonardo is a coming-of-age tale, but it’s also a murder mystery, a love story, and a study of genius all in one. Like the man itself, it perhaps doesn’t quite know what it wants to be.

The drama sometimes feels like the sort of educational film they have on loop at museums, a kind of animated Wikipedia entry, with a script that prefers not to let subtext get in the way of straight facts.

The script is woeful. Half of the actors look absolutely stricken with horror and those who are giving it a good try – including the stalwart Turner – make you want to cry with compassion. The whole thing is paint by numbers and there are moments when all you can do is shake your head in disbelief.

The writers, Frank Spotnitz, Steve Thompson and Gabbie Asher, never bother giving it any real momentum or patching its holes. And since this is, again, the story of a great artist’s life, they make sure to stuff it full of every “great artist” cliché they can find.

There were far too many scenes of people opening and closing doors or creeping up and down stairs without doing or saying anything important. The fact that the production was beset by Covid-related issues really showed: it looked like a film set and not a particularly convincing one.