EMBERS.

London.

EMBERS
by Christopher Hampton based on the novel by Sandor Marai, translated by Carol Brown Janeway.

Duke of York’s Theatre.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed & Sat 2.30pm.
Runs 2hr One interval.

TICKETS: 0870 060 6623 (£2.50 transaction fee).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 6 March.

Words alone can say all that needs to be said.
Looking back from the 1940s to the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s last days, Sandor Marai, in Christopher Hampton’s elegant dramatisation, unlocks the complex nature of friendship fused with sexual desire and guilt.

In 1940, Henrik and Konrad are old men (Henrik’s nurse, a brief role made telling by Jean Boht with a sweet affection contrasting the men’s tense relationship, is 91). Henrik has invited Konrad to his castle to dissect their feelings for Henrik’s long-dead wife. She was killed by her husband’s coldness, and her lover, Konrad’s, desertion. And she was possibly implicated in a plot to murder her husband.

Before this amalgam of sex and death has the wrong audience racing for tickets, it must be said this is a reflective piece, a look back in ruefulness, as much for a society, as for a woman, long gone. The novel worked well as a radio-play last year, its complex dissections unravelling through voices alone. Voices do memory well.

Physical presences bring complications. Jeremy Irons begins every bit the Austro-Hungarian aristocrat, straight-backed and grizzle-bearded. But that’s at odds with the personal manner of the second part, when his bursts of sudden anger seem unreal. Yet this is the longer, more satisfying act when the ground’s been painstakingly laid and the past can come to the fore.

But not as a combat. No verbal sparks fly, for Konrad barely says a word. Patrick Malahide’s first-rate, with his slight stoop and limp, looking pained at what he hears, gripping his chair-wing, then quietly denying the resolution of an easy answer. But it’s a fine actor’s triumph over necessity.

At first sight, Peter J Davison’s set shows an elegant room. But it’s soon evident how bare and scruffy its high walls are. The empty space where the dead woman’s portrait stood is noticeable (it’s fitting the most noticeable gain from the visual medium is an absence).

Even the excellent Michael Blakemore’s production has unconvincing moments, notably a remarkably brief and dramatically convenient storm serving to put out the lights as the talk intensifies. Like its characters, this play is very sophisticated, very elegant, but lacks momentum.

Henrik: Jeremy Irons.
Konrad: Patrick Malahide.
Nini: Jean Boht.

Director: Michael Blakemore.
Designer: Peter J Davison.
Lighting: Mark Henderson.
Sound: John Leonard.
Costume: Sue Wilmington.
Associate director: Jenny Eastop.
Associate sound: John Owens.

2006-03-08 00:16:31