Belvoir St Theatre, October 7
7/10
Knowing if you’ve fallen in lust is straightforward; knowing if you’ve fallen in love, more elusive. In EM Forster’s novel, A Room with a View, Lucy Honeychurch is even confused by lust, so has little chance with love – at least not without wise counsel. But then she lives in starched Edwardian England, where pretence and hypocrisy rule, and therefore, as the Reverend Mr Beebe says, “It can be so difficult to understand people who speak the truth.”
Grace Chapple’s new stage adaptation, directed by Hannah Goodwin, is a brave undertaking. In 1985, Merchant Ivory threw a galaxy of stars at their film version, and even the peerless Daniel Day-Lewis struggled as Cecil, the man with whom Lucy thinks she’s fallen in love.
Forster’s prose and view of humanity share an airiness, and his characters are cheapened by excessive caricature. Underscoring his work is a benevolence best encapsulated by Mr Emerson, a humanist and socialist who believes in maximising life’s potential.
Patrick Williams’ performance as the wondrous Emerson is initially unconvincing, although the requisite profundity and serenity happily emerge at the end, when he encourages Lucy to listen to the stirrings in her blood, even if it means swimming against the moral tide.
Nathalie Morris’s Lucy is a firebrand waiting for a match to strike, and she ensures we like her sufficiently to follow her from Florence to Surrey; from Emerson’s dashing son, George (Luke Wiltshire), with whom she shares an illicit kiss or two, to Cecil (Charles Wu).
Chapple gives Lucy more agency in these crucial kisses, and Wiltshire effectively catches George’s bouts of moodiness, reticence and sudden daring. He’s his father’s son, even if the wisdom is a work in progress.
Charles Wu makes Cecil comical, as Chapple sought, but earns cheap laughs, because while Cecil may be a self-satisfied prig, the makings of his subsequent illumination must always be implicit, and not come as a bolt from the Surrey sky.
Tom Conroy’s Mr Beebe is angular, instantly likeable and routinely astute, and now has a lust of his own for Lucy’s puppy-like brother, Freddy (Tomas Kantor). Kate Atkinson provides engaging portrayals of Lucy’s mother and the adventurer/author Miss Lavish, and Hayley McElhinney has enough raw material to hint at the emotional complexity of Charlotte, Lucy’s cousin, who erred, herself, in love.
Zoe Atkinson’s set – a wall of windows with variable view – plays to the production’s delightfully humorous elements, established by Chapple’s use of several characters as unreliable narrators. Lucy’s penchant for playing piano is echoed in Kantor also playing by way of driving a carriage and horses in Italy, and slapstick keyboard accompanies George and Lucy’s stone-throwing competition and the tennis match.
It’s fun and theatrical, but, particularly towards the end, we could have been told less, and allowed to deduce more. Then the emotional impact may have matched the entertainment.
Until November 1.