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MeMcEwan’s novel begins with a play. It was written by 13-year-old Briony Tallis, who has a gift for storytelling. It is fitting that Briony’s story – which is being developed throughout McEwan’s novel – has been adapted for this episode, although it is difficult to follow the beauty of the novel and Joe Wright’s classic film starring Keira Knightley and James McAvoy.
The plot shows the healing power of the myth and its ability to destroy and destroy. It opens in 1935 in the house of the English nobility, when one evening, after seeing the son of the housekeeper, Robbie (Jasper Talbot), having sex with his sister, Cecilia (Miriam Petche), she accuses him of raping his 15-year-old cousin Lola (Yanexi Enriquez). Briony is responsible for that lie long after Robbie is in prison and on the front lines of World War II.
Director Adam Penford’s production does an excellent job of bringing the story to the stage through sound and design. Briony’s secret investigation of the family is interpreted by a beautiful staircase and a mezzanine under Anthony Ward’s glorious floor, covered in a beautiful shadow (Aideen Malone’s beautiful lighting) accompanied by Alexandra Faye Braithwaite’s ethereal electronic score.
Acting is also a skill; Isabella Dempster’s Briony is driven by a dangerous emotional and selfish environment, and her daughter’s understanding of Robbie’s sexual desire as violence or harm is well conveyed. Petche oscillates between vulnerability and vulnerability, settling on the bright green dress Cecilia wears in her library encounter with Robbie while she manages to look like a lighter version of Knightley from the film. Talbot, who played last Mick Jagger at this stage (and Alan Hollinghurst for Nick Guest in the middleat the Almeida in London) also shows his versatility. The absence of Siân Phillips, who used to be called the main Briony but is leaving for personal reasons, is filled by Jessica Turner.
Nothing is devastating enough, though. The country house drama of the first part is flying, at least. The class difference between Cecilia and Robbie (the latter’s behavior is wavering between servant and friend) is captured by the sex between them, and the sex in the library is well done. Class norms are captured in what appears to be the direct casting of black actors as workers under the stairs.
But it is difficult to explain the passage of time in the seventies and the fall of the war, especially the horrors of Dunkirk. Briony throws herself into nursing wounded soldiers as a form of penance, but the scene where she tries to comfort a French soldier whose part of his scalp is missing does not have the same power, or fear. While Christopher Hampton’s presentation (of Wright’s 2007 film), seemed intimate, it is far from this. We don’t live in the heads of these characters, so we don’t get a full picture of Robbie’s frustration or Briony’s guilt, although Cecilia is angry with her younger sister.
The search for truth and the comfort of make-believe seems like a conspiracy – and there are many stories to be told. So this production feels like a heartless love story and a synthesis of McEwan’s novel, albeit a beautiful one at that.
