Atonement - Review

Festival Theatre, Chichester

****

Written by Ian McEwan

Adapted for the stage by Christopher Hampton

Directed by Adam Penford

Miriam Petche

Ian McEwan’s Atonement takes an act of intimate deceit, exploding it across years and battlegrounds into a landscape of epic romance and consequence. It only took six years for McEwan’s 2001 novel to be translated into an award-winning movie and it is screenwriter Christopher Hampton who has returned to this modern classic, this time adapting the tale for the stage.

McEwan’s story as first published was a lavish depiction of wealth, class, deceit and its consequences, as well as a study on the power of the written word. To condense such an opus into two hours on stage (including interval) is a challenge that by its very nature sees corners cut from McEwan’s brilliant original. That being said, Hampton nonetheless fashions a stimulating drama that preserves much of the essence of this richly complex yarn.

We meet the young Briony Tallis in the 1930s. A precociously gifted young teenager with a vivid imagination, as the course of a misconstrued day in her family’s Surrey mansion unfolds, Briony tells a damning lie that sees her sister Cecilia’s lover Robbie ultimately jailed for a crime that he did not commit.

Isabella Dempster plays young Briony, who the story follows from adolescence into her early adult years. Dempster ages cleverly, with her youthful impetuousness evolving into a more considered maturity as the guilt of her deception weighs increasingly heavy upon her. Miriam Petche and Jasper Talbot are respectively Cecilia and Robbie, both delivering performances of heartbreaking poignancy. Theirs was a love barely requited, the two actors capturing the human complexities of their pain in moments of theatrical excellence. The story’s epilogue features a brief appearance from Jessica Turner as the elderly Briony, in terminal decline from vascular dementia and expounding upon her lifetime of atonement. Having been only very recently cast into the role following the unexpected indisposition of the originally cast Sian Phillips, Turner’s work is outstanding.

Atonement as a narrative depends upon a classy design brief, with Chichester veteran Anthony Ward delivering exquisite settings and costumes. A combination of practical ingenuity and slick projections transfer the action across southern England and war-torn northern France, while the costuming, notably Cecilia’s stunning green dress, critical to a focal point of the story, is outstanding.

Only on at Chichester for two more weeks, one can only hope for the show to transfer. Atonement is an evening of tragically beautiful theatre.

Runs until 20th June

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan