Tag Archives: Finbar Lynch

“The Forest” at the Hampstead Theatre

Few will rate this new play from Florian Zeller as his best. But a world première from the successful French writer is a feather in the cap of any theatre. Add a superb cast and skilled direction from Jonathan Kent and the show becomes a hot ticket.

Zeller likes to play with an audience, and you either love or loathe his intellectual games. His obsession with truth and family relations, with reality and mental illness, are familiar from hit shows such The Father and The Son. In The Forest, additional surreal touches and elements of a thriller make this story of infidelity original and entertaining.

“Sad and strange”

The Forest has three romantic affairs, well, two, really, with three acts containing repetitions as well as alternate outcomes. All the action is engendered by one man’s perspective. It’s less complex than it sounds (thanks to Kent’s disciplined approach). The idea of a kaleidoscope (cribbed from the programme) is worth bearing in mind, but it’s still often wilfully baffling.

Gina Mckee in The Forest credit The Other Richard
Gina McKee

There’s a lot of suffering in the play. A strong performance from Gina McKee as The Wife shows suspicion and concern. Angel Coulby is great as The Girlfriend, a deliberately opaque role. That this woman is perceived as unstable and dangerous comes to the fore. Both characters are shown as they relate to the lead protagonist, and increasingly so, which gives the text dynamism as well as making it uncomfortable.

If we struggle to find an emotional response to the play, this could well be Zeller’s intention. Toby Stephens leads the action alongside Paul McGann as The Man, a character so important that he needs two performers. Interpretations are welcome; but it seems we are watching a mental breakdown, fantasies and all – his mistress kills herself (or was she murdered?).

“Abandoned in a forest”

Coulby’s character is described as “difficult to manage”. And that isn’t going to endear this Man to anyone. The status of this wealthy, much-respected figure is emphasised. Is our sympathy for him a challenge? Stephens manages to convey grief and tension, and it’s hard not to feel for someone so lost.  Especially when the imagined therapist/interrogator he talks to is a spooky Man in Black, exquisitely depicted by Finbar Lynch.

Zeller’s audience might feel a little lost at times, too. Instruction for the distinct zones of Anna Fleischle’s design is that “interpenetration” occurs. Thankfully, this is subtly handled by Kent. Hugh Vanstone’s lighting is excellent. The play is a puzzle, stylishly set (quite literally… there’s some lovely furniture here). As delusions escalate (let’s just say we end up with a dead deer on stage), you can’t help feeling it all seems a great deal of effort for a simple moral message.

Until 12 March 2022

www.hampsteadtheatre.com

Photos by The Other Richard

“The Silence of the Sea” at the Trafalgar Studios

A very different kind of wartime drama, based on a novella written at the start of World War II by French intellectual Jean Bruller, aka Vercors, The Silence of the Sea is about an unusually quiet form of resistance. A German soldier is billeted with a French couple whose delivery of the silent treatment tests his sanity. It’s a form of rebellion that demands determination and restraint – both from its protagonists and the creative team of the play – and the results are startling, compelling and easy to recommend.

The Silence of the Sea is sophisticated stuff, not least in its nuanced approach to the occupying Nazi: a philosophising Francophile of remarkable amiability, he’s a musician at home so that the silence of his unwilling housemates becomes a torture to him and leads him to confide more and more.

The three complex roles produce some fine acting. Leo Bill brings just the right edge to his unusually sensitive warrior, showing great skill in just holding back from winning us over, and Simona Bitmaté gives an intense performance as the young woman forced to live with him. But it’s the excellent Finbar Lynch who has our attention, with asides to the audience that show his remarkable ability as a storyteller.

The production marks the end of the Donmar’s initiative for young directors at the Trafalgar Studios, supported by United House, and that’s a pity. The director here, Simon Evans, has excelled. Generating fantastic performances that feel in-depth but not indulgent, with the help of some great sound design from Gregory Clarke, he makes this tiny venue drip with atmosphere, and cleverly glides over the play’s more pretentious moments to focus on its powerful drama.

Until 2 February 2012

www.donmarwarehouse.com

Photo by Simon Kane

Written 15 January 2013 for The London Magazine

“The Fastest Clock in the Universe” at the Hampstead Theatre

Part of Hampstead Theatre’s 50-year celebration series, the revival of Philip Ridley’s The Fastest Clock in the Universe hopes to rekindle the play’s success from its original run in 1992. Given that Ridley is concerned with pretty much all the basic human vices, this disturbing work has retained its power to haunt.

The scenario is distasteful enough. Cougar Glass (Alec Newman) lives off an adoring older man called Captain Took. Easily debilitated by the very mention of his age, each year Cougar celebrates his “19th” birthday by seducing a young schoolboy.

Cougar’s every action is arrogant, his only occupation to preserve his appearance. Fittingly, he spends half of the play in his underwear. Finbar Lynch is terrifying as the clearly unbalanced Took, old before his time and crippled with insecurity about his own appearance. Took dotes on Cougar as mother and housewife, rewarded by a brief hug as long as he agrees to wear rubber gloves.

So far, so strange. Ridley’s master stroke in the telling of this repulsive story is to create a bizarre world that is removed enough from our own to allow us to watch, but which, while exaggerating human nature, makes us recognise characters motivations and faults with great clarity. While references and inspirations from other playwrights are numerous, the spirit is predominately Dickensian. All these strangely named characters inhabit a dilapidated and corrupt East London and display their all too obvious flaws.

A Gothic sense of impending doom comes from the cruel game Cougar plays with his potential victim; he tells the young boy, Foxtrot Darling, that they share a recent bereavement.  As the deception increases and even Captain Took remonstrates with Cougar, we are introduced to our final character – Foxtrot’s unexpected pregnant fiancée Sherbert Gravel has invited herself along to the party as well.

Sherbert, played wonderfully by Jaime Winstone, is the highlight of the play. She brings out the black comedy in the work, alongside the potential for violence that she is finally (and shockingly) a victim to. Yet her barbed asides to Cougar do little to hide her own motivation – her protection of Foxtrot is more about saving herself than the dreary boy whose life she is planning to dominate.

While Winstone’s movement about the stage alone is something to behold – teetering on high heels that might be the death of her or that she might come to use as a weapon – the object of everyone’s affection does little to hold the audience’s attention. Neet Mohan as Darling may have the looks for the part but his vulnerability seems unconvincing. He bounds around the stage and stands on furniture in a manner that doesn’t match Foxtrot’s situation.

And yet the quality of the writing saves the evening.  The dialogue is rich, complex and direct. It is not pleasant but it fascinates. Revelling in his perversity, Cougar describes his guests as fellow cannibals and welcomes us all to the abattoir.

Until 17 October 2009

www.hampsteadtheatre.com

Photo by Manuel Harlan

Written 27 September 2009 for The London Magazine