PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Phèdre

Phèdre - NT Live
National Theatre, Waterloo

The National Theatre’s latest initiative to bring theatre to the masses sees a live version of Jean Racine’s Phèdre broadcasted to cinema audiences worldwide.

King Theseus, the King of Athens, has been missing for months. His wife Phèdre is left to look after their children and, believing Theseus to be dead, her nurse Oenone convinces her to admit her rampant lust for stepson Hippolytus. However, Hippolytus is in love with Aricia, the grand-daughter of Erechteus, the former King of Athens─ who Theseus despises. When Theseus returns from the underworld, this collection of guilty passions rear their ugly head.

Dominic Cooper plays the implacable Hippolytus, who rises to the challenge of conveying some of the play’s most complex emotions: seething hatred, stifled passion and sombre austerity. Still young in years, Cooper definitively illustrates that his repertoire can extend to more mature roles. The imposing authority of his father Theseus is captured effectively by Stanley Townsend’s incredible booming voice. However, any hint that this figure could have had numerous female conquests and slain yet more monsters, is somewhat mitigated by his rather incongruous attire.

The lady of the moment is evidently Dame Helen Mirren. As Phèdre, she has to play the fine line between anguish and madness, without letting it seem histrionic. For the most part, I think she does this and excels in heightening the emotional intensity of the long monologues to maximum effect. As her aid, Margaret Tyzack’s Oenone is suitably witty in places. Ruth Negga also plays Aricia with a perceptive understanding of both the character’s tenderness and emotional fortitude.

In the pre-theatre introduction, Phèdre’s director Nicholas Hytner comments that NT Live affords an audience the luxury of seeing the actors close up, of witnessing their every move. Certainly, every expression, every tremble, every grimace, even every intake of breath, is on display. However, although Ted Hughes’ translation is a magnificent achievement, rendering Racine’s words readily accessible to audiences, the overall production is let down by lack of pauses and lack of an interval. As an incredibly intense piece of theatre, there is the sensation that much of the power and visceral emotion that each actor so carefully builds up, becomes lost. This is illustrated by John Shrapnel’s final monologue as Thérmène. Having recounted with great vigour Hippolytus’ death, the power of Shrapnel’s performance loses some of its magnitude as the story goes on, just that bit too long, particularly for cinema audiences’ to bear.

NT Live has pioneered a wonderful project to bring theatre to the cinema and a talented cast render a compelling production of Racine’s powerful work. Hytner describes the project’s aim “to convey something of the excitement of live theatre to the world.” This is certainly where the project succeeds, although it would be interesting to see the production in the theatre itself, as there is no denying that expectations and experience would be different─ and certainly more powerful ─when an audience sees these actors in the flesh.

Ruth Collins

Phèdre will run at the Lyttleton Theatre until 27th August