Upfront confession: Mrs Chrisparkle and I were unfamiliar with both the novel and film of Ian McEwan’s Atonement, but our theatre companions, Professor and Mrs Plum, are both avid fans of the book and assured us that the play is very faithful to the original. Christopher Hampton has adapted the book for the stage; he had also authored the 2007 screen adaptation, so I guess he didn’t have more than a few tweaks to create the finished article. I jest of course.
In case, like us, you don’t know; set in 1935, 13-years-old Briony Tallis who lives at the big family mansion has fallen head over heels in love with Robbie who works as a gardener there. Robbie, however, is smitten with Briony’s adult sister Cecilia, and Briony is jealous of their relationship. At a family gathering, Briony’s cousin Lola is raped but does not see the face of her attacker, so cannot identify him for certain. Briony tells the police that she saw that it was Robbie. Robbie protests his innocence; but whom do the police believe? In the second Act, the story continues into World War Two with Cecilia and Briony now both nurses. Briony has concluded that she was wrong to declare Robbie was Lola’s attacker – but what can she do to atone?
This production is most definitely a game of two halves. Act One comes across as fragmented and uneven, a scattergun of scenes that appear to go nowhere, backed up by an ingenious but messy two-level staging that relies heavily on projections. Half an hour in and I was completely clueless as to what the play was all about; a cross between Upstairs Downstairs and The Go-Between that pussyfooted around without ever making a point. Act Two is the production’s saving grace, acquiring a fluidity and much better storytelling finesse. The twist at the end (IYKYK) doesn’t have the emotional punch that it does, I understand, in the book; but, nevertheless, comes across as a creative intellectual puzzle that no one would ever guess. And I’m certainly not going to give the game away.
I can see why it’s obviously a very successful book; one of those rare works that not only tells its own tale but at the same time analyses its own creation, like The French Lieutenant’s Woman, or Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, or indeed Spandau Ballet’s True. Such works have a strange superpower which demands that you sit up and pay attention. I wonder, however, if the first Act would be more convincing if it didn’t align so closely with the book; the story doesn’t unfold as organically as it should.
In fact, the storytelling – at least in the first Act – takes a back seat. I overheard a couple during the interval where a man couldn’t work out what had just happened and needed his wife to clarify that Lola had been raped. I think if that vital fact isn’t made clear, then somehow the direction is going AWOL. There were a few directorial choices in the first Act that made me bridle; is it necessary, for example, when Cecilia jumps into the water to retrieve the missing parts of the jug, for her to be wearing such a see-through top? And indeed, Robbie giving us a flash of his bare bum in the bath added absolutely nothing to the story and just made me feel like the actors were being somehow manipulated. The breaking of the Meissen vase was, by the way, one of the least convincing stage effects I’ve ever seen – a proper shocker given the resources that Chichester can access. Additionally, it’s a shame that uneven LED panels creating the big screen effect at the back of the stage mean that projections of written words, or translations from French, both of which are important for plot development, look wonky at times. It’s not a huge problem overall, but it does give you the impression that the production was done on the cheap.
There are, fortunately, some first-rate performances to take our minds off some of the more ham-fisted elements of the production. Debra Gillett livens up every scene with her entertaining portrayals of the snooty Aunt Emily Tallis and the authoritarian Sister Drummond. Jonathan Oliver gives a nicely judged portrayal of the police inspector and the adult Pierrot Quincey, James Backway is delightfully obnoxious as Paul Marshall but a convincingly supportive corporal Tommy Nettle, and Isabella Dempster excellent as the privileged and pompous young Briony. At our performance, the young brothers Jackson and Pierrot were played by Jacob Isaacs and Felix Kennedy who gave very believable, assured performances.
The final scene, set in 1999, is dominated by the elderly Briony, now a successful author, played with calm conviction by Jessica Turner. In the lead roles, Jasper Talbot is excellent as Robbie, particularly in his wartime and post-war scenes, suffering both physical and mental battle scars; and Miriam Petche is also very strong as Cecilia, a determined, forthright and unforgiving character, forced to confront injustice in a manner for which she was not educated.
The second Act is engrossing, revealing, and satisfying; it’s a shame that the first Act is such a slow and unengaging introduction to the meat of the story. Nevertheless, there’s much to enjoy and admire, and there’s no underestimating the brilliance of McEwan’s plot construction. Atonement continues at the Festival Theatre until Saturday 20th June.
Three-sy Does It!