Review – The Forsyte Saga, Parts One and Two, Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 5th December 2025

Posted on December 6, 2025 by therealchrisparkle

©Cam Harle

It’s impossible to underestimate the importance of The Forsyte Saga to the nation’s psyche in the 1960s. The Queen’s coronation aside, it was one of the first examples of event TV, when Britain stopped doing everything else to catch up with what Soames, Irene and Fleur would get up to next. One of my first television memories is a distinctly black-and-white Soames rushing back into the flames of Robin Hill to rescue his beloved paintings and not making it out alive. That and the Tingha and Tucker Club, naturally.

©Cam Harle

John Galsworthy’s evergreen Forsyte books – nine in total – were published between 1906 and 1933 and chronicle the lives of a ruthless family who knew only two things: the value of money and the importance of repressing one’s emotions. Anything that could jeopardise either of those two activities was to be eliminated from their lives. But people are only human, and they do have emotions, and money isn’t always available, so inevitably real life would permeate their walls and disrupt them.

©Cam Harle

Shaun McKenna and Lin Coghlan’s adaptation – originally for radio but now re-adapted for the stage – concentrates first on the beautiful Irene who cannot abide her husband Soames, and second on Fleur, the curious and independent daughter of Soames and his second wife Annette. And, of course, in Soames, Galsworthy created an extraordinary character – a true villain but with a multifaceted personality, answerable to nobody except his father, and who has to mask his human foibles in order to preserve that Forsyte resolute respectability.

©Cam Harle

The Man of Property, as the first book of the saga is named, cleverly plays on the double meaning of the word property, suggesting not only Soames’ desire to have a great house to live in, but also his need to acquire things – and more disastrously, people. Fleur acts as a narrator for both plays – although less so in the second play – as she picks her way through an understanding of what happened before her birth, and what elements have combined to make the adult Fleur who she is. Will she go on to become a Woman of Property?

©Cam Harle

The late Victorian and Edwardian times are perhaps not seen today as the most intriguing eras of our history – certainly not in comparison to fifty or sixty years ago when TV’s The Forsyte Saga led into the likes of Upstairs Downstairs and The Duchess of Duke Street. However, Galsworthy’s characters and their stories examine the most timeless of themes: familial relationships, secrets and lies, honour and dishonour, and they will never become irrelevant. Soames’ rape of his wife is a pivotal act, not illegal at the time but totally barbaric and unforgivable. And, of course, a modern audience quite correctly condemns him outright for it, as indeed do many of his peers. Yet, in one respect, he’s merely obeying the advice of his father, whom we see as an irascible but rather likeable and funny old duffer. Curiously, we don’t condemn him in the same way. This is all part of the gripping story line that gives you so much to consider and assess, which is why you’re hooked throughout.

©Cam Harle

That said, there’s a definite imbalance in the two plays being performed together as a whole. Part One, Irene, is truly brilliant throughout. You can’t wait for each scene to develop as you find out more about all these fascinating people. And the play ends on a delicious sudden moment that makes you yearn to watch the second part instantly.

However, Part Two, Fleur, doesn’t quite have the same irresistible plot. We miss the rich tapestry of the bickering, repressed older generation – the Forsyte Exchange, as Fleur puts it; it’s replaced by fewer characters, and a simpler, more straightforward domestic love triangle story. It’s a credit to the production that it still holds our interest, but it’s simply not quite as absorbing. I guess one can only blame Galsworthy for that (and he’s long dead). It’s possible to see each play separately on a different day, or to immerse yourself in a Forsytian binge with Irene as a matinee and Fleur in the evening. Watching the plays in that chronological order makes much more sense; I think if you see Fleur first, some aspects simply won’t make sufficient sense or at least won’t resonate as well.

©Cam Harle

It’s a magnificent double-production; a first-rate cast, fantastic storytelling, a delightfully bare stage, save for a few chairs and occasional other props, quality costume design, elegant writing and effective direction. Luxuriously rich red curtains adorn the back of the stage for Irene, that both indicate the wealth of the family but also represent those secrets that are hidden when the curtains close. They’re removed for Fleur, to reveal the stark, featureless brick wall that not only represents Robin Hill but gives the sense of a terrifying exposure, with no hiding place. Alex Musgrave’s telling lighting design works most effectively in Irene, where it starkly delineates her private bedroom against which she locks her persistent husband.

©Cam Harle

The cast are uniformly superb, without the remotest weak link, creating a splendid ensemble. Flora Spencer-Longhurst controls the stage from the start as Fleur, combining her narrator role with a constantly growing understanding of her ancestors’ motivations and problems; a truly believable central character around which the entire five hours of theatre revolve. As her character becomes more mischievous and wilful, we still identify with her, despite her reckless decisions. Fiona Hampton absolutely captures Irene’s tragically unhappy marriage and completely inhabits the remarkable dignity that the character maintains throughout. It is a shame that there is comparatively little for the character to do as the second play moves to its conclusion.

©Cam Harle

There is much in the way of clever doubling-up of roles over the two plays. Jamie Wilkes is excellent as the outcast Jo Forsyte in the first play, subtly portraying his slowly growing affection for Irene; and as the honest and positive young Michael Mont, who marries Fleur. His physical comedy of trying to take Fleur on a boat ride is hilarious, and he delivers a terrific exchange with Soames about the “ownership” of women. Andy Rush, too, is superb as Bosinney, the sharply determined architect with whom Irene has an affair, and the sunny-dispositioned Jon Forsyte who becomes an irresistible possession to Fleur in the same way that Irene was to her father.

©Cam Harle

Michael Lumsden gives us a brilliant Old Jolyon – his death scene was genuinely moving – as well as some other entertaining characterisations, and Nigel Hastings is superb as James Forsyte, Soames’ father, as the kindly and earnest older Jo Forsyte, and the aggressively opinionated painter Harold Blade. Florence Roberts’ marvellously effervescent young June steals a wonderful scene when she leaves her indelible mark on the remaining members of the Forsyte Exchange; as well as giving us an emotionally powerful Anne – Jon’s increasingly alarmed wife – and an amusingly manipulative Annette.

©Cam Harle

The truly outstanding performance comes from Joseph Millson as Soames, totally embodying the character’s slimy, reptilian nature, constantly lurking as a malign presence in Irene’s life, opting to endanger Annette’s life in order to obtain his son, and generally observing how his understanding of human nature is becoming more outdated as life goes on. I’ve only seen Mr Millson perform comedy roles before, and he uses his fantastic comic timing to perfection in this otherwise non-comedic role, placing his words and movements with absolute precision to create a riveting characterisation that endures long after curtain down.

It’s a stunning production that frequently gave me Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby chills. It’s unfortunate that the sheer thrills of Part One don’t quite endure into Part Two, but it’s still more than good enough to recommend it without hesitation. A hugely entertaining double bill, and an excellent Christmas offering from the RSC.

Five Alive, Let Theatre Thrive!

Review – Touching the Void, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 9th October 2018

Posted on October 11, 2018 by therealchrisparkle

This is, by necessity, so full of spoilers that I really should warn you before you read it!

As usual, I discover that Mrs Chrisparkle and I are one of the few people never to have read Joe Simpson’s Touching the Void, nor seen the film, nor even heard of it. For someone who likes to think they have their finger on the cultural pulse, I do sometimes wonder at my own ignorance. Anyway, you, gentle reader, will already know this is an extraordinary true-life account of mountaineer Joe’s very near-death experience as he survived in a glacier with a broken leg withneither food, water nor company for three days on the Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in 1985. All I knew was that it was a book, written by and about the central character, inspired by his experience. I did not know that it was 100% factual; I thought perhaps it was part true-life, part fiction. So, when everyone else in the theatre knew that, somehow, at the end of the play, he would survive… I didn’t.

To take a book like this and recreate it on a stage takes true vision and bravery, and the whole creative team of writer David Greig, director Tom Morris, designer Ti Green, lighting designer Chris Davey, composer Jon Nicholls and movement director Sasha Milavic Davies have done an extraordinary job of bringing the story to life without actually having to take us to a perilous part of Peru. You very much get the impression of this being a stage representation of a Hollywood Adventure Blockbuster; characters helplessly half-suspended from a hostile snow-covered mountain, with the wind and the rain pounding against them, and, just like you would in the movies, you find yourself chewing your fingers with tension to see how they’re going to get out of this situation – if they can.

Much of what happens in the play takes place inside Joe Simpson’s head – even if we don’t realise it at the time – so the lines between reality and hallucination are thoroughly blurred. The use of humdrum day-to-day items to represent aspects of the mountain terrain – chairs, pub trays, a Gents sign, even a juke-box, help merge the ordinary with the extraordinary, to create a fascinating contrast. The staging and ideas are very inventive – for example, we both loved the use of peanuts as models! Tom Morris’ direction keeps us guessing on the finer details of the story right until the very end; and David Greig has found a way of staging a Scottish pub alongside a Peruvian mountain, with great delicacy and insight; he’s also fleshed out some fascinating characters, and given them some great lines.

Ti Green’s central masterpiece – her abstract impression of a mountain and glacier, constructed as a floating frame with white paper and material fixed to it – occupies your mind superbly as you wonder how on earth anyone could navigate through it. One truly thrilling effect is how they have repositioned gravity, so that if anything falls downwards, like a rope, or a man, it actually flies out through the back wall.This plays a marvellous visual trick with your brain and gives you an additional sense of the dangers risked by the mountaineers. Jon Nicholls’ haunting and luscious themes swell in to the action not unlike the dramatic background music in a David Attenborough programme – and Joe Simpson’s own Desert Island Discs choices also make themselves felt at odd moments during the play.

How often have you been to the theatre and said to yourself, well the second half was much better than the first…. It seems to me that basic dramatic structure requires for an escalation in tension, excitement, humour, farce, horror, whatever, to keep our attention and excitement… and as a result you expect a show to get better as it goes on. This was one of those rare occasions when the reverse is true. The sheer drama and theatrical electricity of the portrayal of Joe and Simon’s tackling the Siula Grande, with their death-defying climbing over the mountain and glacier is edge-of-your-seat stuff.Combined with Richard’s thrilling commentary of every step they took, where his microphone becomes more augmented and distorted and more terrifyingly unreal as it goes on, the first act culminates in a truly gripping scene that stays in your mind for ages afterwards. It certainly stopped Mrs C and I having a good night’s sleep that night! So you go into the interval literally speechless at the brilliance you have just witnessed.

Here comes the controversial bit. The downside to this, sadly, is that the second act, which mainly consists of Joe’s resilient attempts to stay alive when there is simply no hope, is quite static and repetitive in comparison, and – it grieves me to say this, because I feel really mean-spirited with such a visionary production – I got bored. So did Mrs C. The man next to me who was riveted in the first act, was fast asleep. I don’t think the extra-long interval helps, as the momentum that had been built up certainly weakens. The fact is, there are only so many times you can watch a man slowly crawl on the floor, screaming in agony and making unintelligible “muguhumptftuwumpf” sounds before you begin to drift off.I understand this is true to the book and to the film; and if the poor man did spend all that time on his own just surviving through sheer determination, then how else can you depict it on stage? But the truth remains that the huge adrenaline surge you get at the end of the first act just dissipates away during the second. So my reaction at the end of the play was simply “all that…. and he lived??” – which Mrs C said was probably one of the least gracious comments ever to be made about someone’s survival against all odds.

However, there are so many positive things about the extraordinary stagecraft of this production that I couldn’t possibly be grumpy about it. And all the performances are of suitably epic, or near-epic, proportions. Josh Williams gives a wonderfully optimistic and adventurous performance as Joe; you can just imagine that he would be the kind of charismatic guy who would talk you into an adventure where you risk your life just for the hell of it. He doesn’t hold back on expressing the pain and anguish of his injury and his plight. And how on earth does he get in and out of that Act Two sleeping bag without us noticing? Some pretty amazing stage magic there!

There’s also an excellent performance by Fiona Hampton as his sister Sarah; belligerently refusing to pander to the bland sympathies of Joe’s mountaineering mates, mockingly acting as the voice in Joe’s head encouraging him to find the strength to survive. Patrick McNamee’s Richard is a mild, well-meaning, unambitious dawdler who knows he’s at the bottom of the pecking order, happy to man base-camp if that’s what the alpha males want; and Edward Hayter’s Simon is also keen as mustard in the planning and mountaineering scenes,until it all goes horribly wrong, when he retreats into his shell. I did feel, however, that he underplayed the moral dilemma of the “cutting the rope” problem. It’s a fascinating question; you have a choice of both dying, or of saving yourself only – what do you do? If ever a play had a Big Issue, this is the one. But I felt that his remorse, such as it was, was no more than if he’d put the bins out late. I’m sure there should have been a lot of angst there that I just didn’t get.

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that I always prefer a brave failure to a lazy success. I wouldn’t by any means describe this as a failure because there is so much going for it – and its bravery is beyond question. You should definitely go and see it for yourself and make your own mind up. After it closes in Northampton on October 20th, the tour continues in 2019 to Edinburgh, Perth, Inverness and Hong Kong.