THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN
Brighton Little Theatre’s reputation goes from strength to strength and this dramatisation of the John Fowles novel of the same name goes a long way to securing that. It’s a complex enough novel to start with, and one that has so much resonance for anyone who is a creative writer. On the page the layered complexities of plot and thought are difficult enough for the reader. So how does a playwright set about staging the novel in a way that deals with the twists and turns the story and the creator of the story within the novel go about this. The film, good as it was, did not offer the satisfaction of the book for sure so it was with trepidation that I sat down and waited for a staged version to unfold.
And unfold it did in the most illuminating fashion. The writer is ever present, pondering plot and character. The characters emerge and reveal their roles gradually and graphically against a pale abstract set that serves as every location. Two stacks of black chairs take on the integral device of furnishing those locations throughout and the large cast are charged with lifting and shifting them from space to space and purpose to purpose. It’s an elegant device that deserves the name chaireography. Director Claire Lewis has beautifully and elegantly crafted the way the play is structured and presented in such a small space. It could easily have been cluttered and clumsy but it works incredibly well.
Her skills are also apparent in the way the cast reveal their roles, most members of the company have to take on multiple parts, from bitter widows to brazen hussies and all points between for the women, and servants to toffs for the men, and I don’t think I have ever seen a better costumed production, stylish, lavish and for the most part using a very clear and clean palette of colours.
The addition of music, some sung live, adds to the richness of the evening and including a very funny musical number in the house of ill repute adds a moment of humorous relief to the darkness of the tale.
This is of course a story within a story. On one level we have the author, fighting to create and discovering that his creations will take on a life of their own, try doing it, this really happens! And then the story within of Sarah Woodruff, a mysterious creature whose choices and actions lead everyone down a very dark path indeed.
The cast is marvellous and flawlessly deliver the, at times, dense text. Duncan Henderson is utterly convincing as the troubled writer and Grogan. Amelia Thurley is gloweringly dark as Sara Woodruff and Lewis Todhunter marvellous as suitor Charles Smithson in his fall from elegant and arrogant sophistication to desperation and disgrace. Patti Griffiths makes an excellent bitter and religiously twisted Mrs Poulteney, staring blankly into the dark as she delivers her barbed comments.
Was John Fowles guilty of misogyny one has to ask, the females in the story have few saving graces, but then neither do the men. It’s the story of human failings, damaged relationships and the contrast between love and lust in which obsession plays so strong a part.
This is proper theatre, done with style and with conviction. I was gripped from start to finish by the quality of both cast and direction, the way the heart of the book was preserved and presented in Mark Healy’s well crafted script. Michael James’s music is hauntingly good and Michael Folkards’s layered set works well and Beverley Grover’s lighting is good but at times suffers as all small spaces do when trying to achieve real darkness and isolated pools of light. That aside this is first class stuff and is deservingly selling out.
Andrew Kay
27 July
Brighton Little Theatre
Rating:
