Adaptations - Part I

Adaptations are tricky matters, especially if your source material is regarded as part of the canon. Yet, I suspect, that's precisely the reason why some writers/directors are drawn to face down this uniquely formidable challenge time and again, with varying results. Katie Mitchell's take on Strindberg's A Dream Play, at the National a few years ago, was thoroughly spellbinding. It pushed the text to the edge of possibilities while a new, powerful narrative emerges from within. Her next two productions for the National, Iphegenia at Aulis and The Seagull, were almost identical in many approaches - the bleak stage set; the suffocating lighting design; the droning soundscape; the singularly nihilisic undertone with which every actor in the cast seemed to deliver every line, whatever the circumstance - while neither managed to convince (The Seagull, in particular, was almost disastrous in my view. Most characters ended up being caticatures of what Chekov intended them to be - well, if that had been Mitchell's artistic agenda, then she certainly succeeded).

Having seen two new adaptations in their previews this week (both open in the next few days), I thought I'd make an attempt at writing a review of both here.

Mrs Affleck, at the National (Cottesloe), is a modern take on Ibsen's Little Eyolf, by the young British writer Samuel Adamson, whose previous works include the original play Southwark Fair (which we enjoyed very much) and an adaptation of Ibsen's Pillars of the Community (which we sadly missed, but it received almost unanimous acclaim). I suppose the success of the latter paved the way naturally for this new venture, directed here by Marianne Elliott (whose recent work at the National included War Horse, Saint Joan and the aforementioned Pillars). Little Eyolf, being one of Ibsen's lesser-known works, features similar themes as those of his masterpieces such as Rosmersholm and John Gabriel Borkman: the ambigious and conflicting aspects of familial love, the inate battle of responsibility and desire, the inevitability of past sins - especially those of former generations - catching up with the present and the future.

Adamson is undoubtedly an intelligent writer who wanted to add even more layers to the original story by transferring the actions to 1950s England. Unfortunately, the extra devices he brought into the story in this regard seemed clumsy and superfluous. The Rat Wife in the original story, the mysterious figrue (think a quasi-malicious, female Pied Piper) who might or might not have been responsible for the boy's untimely death, is here replaced by a teenage punk, Flea (was this a deliberate anachronism - I thought they didn't materialise until the sixties?). His appearance in the first act, which ought to be suspenseful (if you read the Ibsen original, this material has potential for a truly creepy moment) is marred by the incongruous combination of metaphysical babble and street slang, and his return in the second half, in the middle of the Afflecks' grief for their now-drowned Ollie (the Adamson incarcation of Little Eyolf), amounts to more exasbating annoyance than anything more illuminating. There's also a second boy, George, who bears witness both to Ollie's ongoing unhappiness and his actual death scene. The fact that he's Carribean is cause for a whole scene in Act II, an emotional confrontation between his usually mild-mannered mother and Mrs Affleck who blurts out a viciously racial remark. Does it add anything meaningful to the emotional core of the story, except as a validation of the new historic/social context here? Not for me.

The heart of Ibsen's story is the intrinsic, moral battle of a man between the life he wants (the almost incestuous passion he's harnoured for his half sister al his life) and the one he's created (the wife whose wealth and beauty he couldn't resist, the child whose disability he may have played a part in causing, the books that he's no longer able to write). There's enough gripping dramatic depth to be explored here without the other distractions. The author and director should have also trusted the transferrability of the material (1880s Norway is a blissfully abstract enough setting) not to need the additional flag-ups. One further qualm about the plot revision is the fact that Audrey, Affleck's half-sister (Naomi Frederick, in a show-stealing performance) discovers the dark family secret - that the two of them are actually not related, thanks to her mother's promiscuity - during the action, rather than before the play begins. The original scenario would create more suspense and nuanced tension during a large part of the play until the secret is revealed, where as here, the discovery results in a moment of impulsive passion in the rain. Not all the newly added elements are problematic, however: the scene where Ollie reappears on the beach, in Audrey's imagination, playing with sand, is a beautfiul trance that we are all willing to be part of.

Finally, It's a shame that Claire Skinner's Rita Affleck is a mostly one-dimensional performance, whether she's conveying jealousy, guilt, hatred, helplessness or despair, whereas Ibsen's RIta Eyolf probably embodied all of these at the same time.