Luke Mably as the denouncing son (originally played by Jonny Lee Miller) remains inscrutable, and therefore riveting, to the last Stephen Moore plays against him perfectly as the bluff father Rory Kinnear is a galvanic yob.īut it's the melding of design, sound and character isation that makes this an unforgettable production: everything works together to investigate a mysterious family life. There are new actors in three central roles, and all are spot-on. Many of the fine original cast remain: with Jane Asher giving the melting-icicle performance of her life and Sam Cox providing a comic high spot as a depressive valetudinarian. Ian MacNeil's design and Jean Kalman's lighting create sumptuous Last Supper tableau-effects, while Paul Arditti's soundtrack - of running water and a child's distant laughter - is chilly, elusive. Conviviality freezes into embarrassment as - in minutes infinitely more goose-pimpling on the stage than they could ever be on screen - silence falls on the feast. Jovial fellow-feeling twists into the racism of the pack. Norris articulates the mayhem that follows with pinpoint precision the texture is always complicated. To my father, who caused the suicide of my twin sister. One of the sons proposes a toast to the placidly smiling assembly. Six months on, it has lost not a jot of its power.Ī well-heeled bourgeois family are celebrating the 60th birthday of their patriarch. Thomas Vinterberg's 1998 film had made the Dogme school famous David Eldridge's stage adaptation increased the claustropho bia, and heightened the drama with echoes of Hamlet. When Rufus Norris's production of Festen opened at the Almeida it looked sure to prove one of the outstanding theatrical occasions of the year. The Postman Always Rings Twice is sensationally enjoyable, but translations from screen to stage can be more than this. Charlotte Emmerson cleverly avoids over-playing: she slinks and slouches, never seeming to think herself as more than a light, disposable thing.
Patrick O'Kane's thug romeo, with his feral face, rolling shoulders and prowling gait, is raw-boned, feverish. The combustible lovers - who straddle each other on cars and in puddles of grimy water - could easily seem the stuff of Mills & Boon or Wuthering Heights, but they look new-minted. Still, it's sultriness that carries the day, and keeps the attention through some straggly plotting in the second half. Django Bates's thrilling bluesy music - violin, bass, guitar and har monica - winds through the action, often sounding as if a lost soul were whistling in the wings. The whole shebang - perhaps influenced by Ian MacNeil's unforgettable expressionist design for An Inspector Calls - is set behind a desolate no-man's-land of rocks and rubbish bins. The lovers talk about having the Devil in bed with them. A massive welcome sign creaks and sways in the wind: when its bulbs fuse, it reads not 'Twin Oaks' but - ironically, in this place of the stuck and the hopeless - 'Win Oaks'. Above sits a vintage car in which the lovers set out to escape and to kill: when it plunges downwards its front wheels get stuck into the ceiling below, like the nose of a crashed aeroplane. Christie provides an upper storey where murders are committed and a lower place where they are dreamt of.ĭown below is a mostly empty diner: through its venetian blinds, midnight blue or pale skies are glimpsed. In Andrew Rattenbury's new adaptation, Cain's novel talks both of conscious intents and a disruptive, explosive unconscious it has a plot which fuses the two. Christie's set is split like two halves of a mind. Jon Buswell's lighting and Bunny Christie's design are crucial.
#STAGE PLOT IMAGES BASS GUITAR MOVIE#
Her production doesn't exactly mimic a movie (there are no cop-out videos) but uses film noir images: silhouettes of fedoras appear in the glass windows of doors shadows sweep across the stage.
Bailey pays tribute to these predecessors. In 1946, Lana Turner played the pent-up waitress who falls for a passing drifter and contrives with him to murder her husband 35 years later, Jessica Lange and Jack Nicholson (Nicholson as the lover, not husband, obviously) appeared in Bob Rafelson's version. James M Cain's 1934 thriller has been filmed four times. And she's done it again with The Postman Always Rings Twice, bringing together some of her Baby Doll team to create a steamy occasion.
Bailey managed it four years ago when she directed Tennessee Williams's Baby Doll. It's a rare thing - outside of those extraordinary Pinter moments when a woman does something with her stockings and everybody holds their breath - to watch, not only sex on the stage (that's routine), but sexiness.
#STAGE PLOT IMAGES BASS GUITAR HOW TO#
Lucy Bailey knows how to make a stage smoulder.
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