Christopher Walker reviews Phaedra a new play by Simon Stone
A play that simultaneously gets a standing ovation and is booed has issues. None of them are the performers’.
Simon Stone’s new play Phaedra is described as being “after Euripides, Seneca and Racine” – ambitious indeed. Its distance from these, and the original Greek myth, may explain some of those boes.
The plot in this new version concerns Helen ( an outstanding Janet McTeer).
She’s a glamourous Holland Park ‘yummy mummy,’ who is a highly successful politician, or at least a member of the Shadow cabinet.
We meet her somewhat dysfunctional family in a fast moving opening scene which is compelling watching, not least thanks to the amusing clowning of her husband (a joyous Paul Chahidi).
Helen’s two children, Declan and Isolde (rather confusing to mix your myths), are also very well played by Archie Barnes and Mackenzie Davis.
Albeit that they are not particularly attractive characters. But then we can blame their parents for that.
The kids condemn their wealthy lifestyle while clearly enjoying every moment of it.
It allows Isolde to work in an NGO with her long suffering husband Eric (an excellent John MacMillan).
Into this already troubled nest comes a cuckoo – Sofiane (Asaad Bouab), who fits in by being very annoying too.
He is the son of Helen’s ex-Moroccan paramour, and she feels an overwhelming physical attraction to him.
Their affair tears the family apart, especially when Sofiane beds Isolde, culminating in a perfectly executed restaurant brawl.
The writing certainly has its moments. But the author’s obsession with endless vignettes, each punctuated by a minute’s darkness with droning Moroccan music, does not facilitate easy watching.
Nor does much of the final scene being in Arabic and French, requiring hard-to-read subtitles.
And while Chloe Lamford’s, inevitably rotating, set is very stylish, it is set back, and contains the performers in a giant cage which makes them hard to see.
At least we can hear them because they are miked, but then that has its own problems.
There’s much to enjoy – superb performances and some good writing. But much that is annoying.
https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/phaedra/
Picture: Phaedra by Stone, Credit: Johan Persson