THE TALKING CURE. To 5 February.
National Theatre
THE TALKING CURE
by Christopher Hampton
Cottesloe Theatre To 5 February 2003
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu & Sat 2.30pm
Runs 2hr 20min One interval
TICKETS 020 7453 3000
Review Timothy Ramsden 18 January
A stimulating play, in a first-rate production.This is an absorbing, thought-provoking play. Written with Hampton's customary grace and wit, its neat interworkings strike mental sparks that fly in many directions.
The cure is what we now call psychoanalysis: invented, but possible not used by, Freud before younger psychologist Carl Jung took it up with a Russian Jewish patient, Sabina Spielrein. It was at an elementary stage: the patient seated rather than lying on a couch; Jung still needing to restrain his comments.
Jodhi May has the hefty acting part here: her convulsions are flawless but its when Sabina matures into a bright psychiatrist herself, and Hampton's invention? Jung's lover that the strength of May's performance fully emerges. Sabina develops in her own right, free from the masculine moral slitherings which Jung's conflicts between instinct and social life create in him, especially under Freud's penetrating gaze.
Dominic Rowan, also playing tearaway psychiatrist Otto Gross, gives psychology's elder statesman a chummy sociability. His inevitable insinuations of the truth which lies behind the lies in Jung's letters and remarks, suggest a keen-minded yet clubbable Sherlock Holmes.
Hampton's play is always watchable, its characters exposed upfront on Tim Hatley's narrow, tiered set, sliding compartments revealing new aspects of the action. There's one blip of formal dislocation: a brief, unannounced shot forward in time to seal Sabina's fate at the hands of male force exploitative beyond Jung's anguished manipulations.
Nancy Carroll's tactful performance mitigates the second-rank position the playwright gives Mrs Jung; the wife whose fortune eases his way into private practice. In one of those moments which reveal their full impact in retrospect, this quiet supporting character (in more senses than one) turns out to have quite enough understanding of the way her husband's mind works, drawing him back from the ex-patient her rival.
Which shows how, so long as neuroses are avoided, social structures undergirded with financial clout hold sway against the gale forces of emotion. That's just one of the ideas that swirl off this intelligent play, in a beautifully acted and skilfully directed production which shows the National at its best in new work.
Carl Gustav Jung: Ralph Fiennes
Emma Jung: Nancy Carroll
Sabina Spielrein: Jodhi May
Nurse: Valeries Spelman
Sigmund Freud/Otto Gross: Dominic Rowan
Orderly/SS Officer: Sean Jackson
Russian Girl/Agathe Jung: Alice Sandelson/Chloe Smyth/Samantha Thompson
Director: Howard Davies
Designer: Tim Hatley
Lighting: Peter Mumford
Sound: Christopher Shutt
Music: Dominic Muldowney
Costume: Jenny Beavan
Fight director: Terry King
Company voice work: Patsy Rodenburg
2003-01-27 01:15:13