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Synopsis Johannes Vermeer is the greatest painter of his time. When he hires a young girl Griet to help in his house, it is not long before she becomes more than a servant - she starts to help him in his studio, learning the art of painting by watching the master. And then, secretly, Vermeer begins to paint her and Griet becomes model and muse for his greatest masterpiece Girl With A Pearl Earring.
The stage version of Girl With a Pearl Earring transferred this week to the West End’s Theatre Royal Haymarket, where it’s booking for a limited season until 1 November (See 1st Night Photos, 30 Sep 2008). Adapted from Tracy Chevalier’s best-selling novel, which has also been adapted for the screen, it tells the story behind the creation of painter Johannes Vermeer’s most famous work.
In the 2003 Hollywood film version, Colin Firth played Vermeer, with Scarlett Johansson starring as his servant girl Griet (the inspiration for the painting). In David Joss Buckley’s stage version, directed by Joe Dowling, the parts are taken by Adrian Dunbar and Kimberley Nixon (pictured). The cast also features Lesley Vickerage as Vermeer’s jealous wife Catherina, Niall Buggy as his lascivious patron, Sara Kestelman, Maggie Service, Jonathan Bailey and Flora Spencer-Longhurst.
First night critics were pretty much unanimous in their assessment of the play as being “civilised” and “well acted” but lacking any real sense of purpose. And Buckley’s “conventional” script populated by “cheap gags” failed to placate the poisoned pens, as some critics went for the jugular with their dismissal of the story as the “stuff of which TV soaps are made”. However, Kimberley Nixon and Adrian Dunbar escaped relatively unscathed, Nixon’s “sweetly innocent” Griet and Dunbar’s “perfectly decent” Vermeer proving a match for Johansson and Firth.
Michael Coveney on Whatsonstage.com (two stars) – “What is the point of this show? It’s not terrible, but it’s hardly exciting … This is a diminution of a prose work of art which is vocalised in the narrative of a young serving girl in the 1666 household of Jan Vermeer in Delft. She is assigned as a slave, becomes enamoured of painting technique and the artist’s mystery, and is removed as a threat to domestic stability. The momentum lies in the slow thrum of her artistic and sensual arousal. There’s absolutely no sense of that in Joe Dowling’s plodding production, which stakes out the narrative in a literal art gallery of Vermeer references, translucent lighting and cheap gags … Kimberley Nixon … is sweetly innocent without ever reverberating as a conduit of artistic temperament or indeed her own sentiments … Adrian Dunbar as Vermeer, oddly confined by a hesitant gait and a terrible wig, soft-pedals the troubled painter into dull non-entity.”
Michael Billington in the Guardian (two stars) – “Theatre, if it is to survive, needs to be abundantly theatrical. Which is a polite way of saying I see little future for this kind of workmanlike reduction of an existing novel. Tracy Chevalier's book is an immensely subtle, compelling, first-person narrative about the obsessiveness of genius and a girl's disruptive impact on Vermeer's household: in David Joss Buckley's adaptation it becomes a conventional, thwarted love-story … Adrian Dunbar is perfectly decent as Vermeer, Kimberley Nixon endows Griet with hungry curiosity, and Sara Kestelman is starched wisdom as the mother-in-law. Peter Mumford's sets and lighting please the eye, and Joe Dowling shows his directorial skill in giving the fragmented scenes an architectural shape … Yet again, adaptation proves Jonathan Miller's point about giving fictional characters an ‘impertinent visibility’.”
Benedict Nightingale in The Times (two stars) – “There’s not much of a story here. The proliferating women in Vermeer’s household, from his envious daughter to his jealous housekeeper to the stern grandma played by Sara Kestelman, all find her (Griet) disconcerting. So do the butcher’s boy, who wants to marry her, and Van Ruijven, the painter’s rich, appreciative but boozily lascivious patron. This last isn’t much of a role for the usually excellent Niall Buggy, since his prime task is to salivate over Griet while coarsely cackling away, but then there isn’t much depth or complexity to any of the characters … Why doesn’t Buckley follow up on the interest that he generates in the divisions between Protestant (Griet) and Catholic (Vermeer) in 17th-century Delft? But, although Joe Dowling’s production stays earthbound, he does get an appealing performance from Nixon. Her Griet is an intelligent, dignified, aloof young woman, whose misfortune is to have others project their feelings onto her.”
Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph - “I suppose I ought to be offering at least a muted welcome to this adaptation of Tracy Chevalier's novel, which has sold more than three million copies worldwide since it was published in 1999. The play is civilised, well-acted, and passes a couple of hours harmlessly enough. But somehow - and the same goes for the book and the movie - it left me feeling unsatisfied, even ripped off … It's only fair to add, however, that this stage version marginally improves on both book and film. David Joss Buckley's adaptation gets deeper into the supporting characters than Chevalier's novel, which was narrated in the first person by Griet, allowing them to express their thoughts and feelings in soliloquies. And, though she is neither as sexy nor as disconcertingly beautiful as Scarlett Johansson is in the film, Kimberley Nixon brings far more vitality, warmth and depth of feeling to the role of Griet.”
Nicholas de Jongh in the Evening Standard (two stars) – “Girl With a Pearl Earring … turns imaginative art history theorising into the stuff of which TV soaps are made … Buckley … lays everything on with a heavy palette and thick brush, though Kimberley Nixon’s impressive Griet maintains her self-possessed cool. The tense, impoverished Vermeer household, from Lesley Vickerage’s jealous wife Catharina and scheming daughter Cornelia to Sara Kestelman’s commanding, manipulative mother-in-law and Niall Buggy’s gross patron, Van Ruijven, who lusts for Griet in living and portrait form, are one-dimensional … Dunbar’s Vermeer, an inappropriate combination of the professorial and avuncular but little more. The painter touches Miss Nixon’s attentive, pertly loquacious Griet with no serious ardour. The pain the poor girl expresses when her ear is symbolically pierced by Vermeer so she can wear his wife’s earring for the portrait is merely that of another female exploited by male, artistic selfishness.”
What is the point of this show? It’s not terrible, but it’s hardly exciting. Actor/playwright David Joss Buckley has avowedly gone back to the wonderful, spry 1999 novel of Tracy Chevalier – transformed into a beautiful film starring Scarlett Johannson and Colin Firth – and drummed it drably into a stilted love story.
This is a diminution of a prose work of art which is vocalised in the narrative of a young serving girl in the 1666 household of Jan Vermeer in Delft. She is assigned as a slave, becomes enamoured of painting technique and the artist’s mystery, and is removed as a threat to domestic stability. The momentum lies in the slow thrum of her artistic and sensual arousal.
There’s absolutely no sense of that in Joe Dowling’s plodding production, which stakes out the narrative in a literal art gallery of Vermeer references, translucent lighting and cheap gags. At least the 2003 film, remarkable for the beauty of the cinematography and the pouting, over-ripe and sullen ambiguity of Johannson’s breakthrough performance as Griet, the teenage tile-maker’s daughter, created its own raison d’etre.
That over-the-shoulder look, lips apart – a signal of sexual intent - eyes shining, face willing, suggesting the Mona Lisa of the northern hemisphere, is totally unremarked in the game, cheeky little performance of Kimberley Nixon – Sophy Hutton in the BBC’s Cranford – as the grovelling Griet. She is sweetly innocent without ever reverberating as a conduit of artistic temperament or indeed her own sentiments.
The programme reproduces some of the great paintings and the show dutifully creates the Vermeer effect in Maggie Service’s milkmaid costume and “The Little Street” as a front cloth. But Adrian Dunbar as Vermeer, oddly confined by a hesitant gait and a terrible wig, soft-pedals the troubled painter into dull nonentity. He dreams of dressing up Griet up as a transfigured model, but the play finds no way of expressing this as part of his social and artistic inspiration, or indeed her emotional dilemma.
Great troupers Niall Buggy and Sara Kestelman pitch in colourfully as a lascivious patron and a dominant square-jawed mother-in-law, but their best efforts are in vain. The set and lighting are the work of Peter Mumford, the superb costumes by Fotini Dimou, and there is willing support from Jonathan Bailey as Griet’s devoted butcher boy and Lesley Vickerage as Vermeer’s long-suffering wife.
I must disagree with a lot of the reviews here. I really enjoyed this. It was captivating and engaging and gradually reels you in. I was really quite moved and loved the costumes and sets. - martin b
09 Oct 08
It's OK but a bit flat. The theatre needs to reduce the price of the tickets to fill those empty seats so don't pay too much.
The lighting was very cleverly done, especially when Griet first puts on the headress and then at the end on the pearl. - quiller
09 Oct 08
Had to leave in the interval after one of the longest hours of my life. A painfully inept production with tedious, trite, banal dialogue and performances to match, from the wooden titular character, to Adrian Dunbar who appears to be sleepwalking through every scene. It is a travesty that a West End theatre is promoting such a poor standard - I have seen more polished and accomplished amateur productions. - JW Booth
04 Oct 08
I haven't read the book or seen the film, which is just as well because the story of Girl With a Pearl Earring is as enigmatic as the painting itself. For two hours nothing definite happens and it is sometimes as exciting as watching paint dry (couldn't resist that). That it just about maintained my interest though is due to some effective charcterisations, including minor players, and exceptional acting. Adrian Dunbar is no better than anything else I have seen him in but luckily the play is as much about the women in his life rather than Vermeer himself. In complete contrast to the review below I thought Kimberley Nixon was remarkably good as Griet. Having only graduated last year, she shone in Cranford alongide Dames Judi and Eileen and here gives a mature and intelligent portrayal of a girl repressed by her religion but discovering her suppressed sexuality. There is no attempt to pretend that the play offers an answer to the question of Griet's true relationship with Vermeer but there's no harm letting an audience come to their own conclusions. - David Baxter
01 Oct 08
Firstly, the story itself is so dull and inconsequential, it would barely stand up as a subplot in any decent play. The terrible performances by Kimberley Nixon, Jonathan Bailey (both delivering to an annoying, shouty, school play standard) and the painfully dull Adrian Dunbar overshadowed the fantastic Sara Kestelman, Maggie Service , Lesley Vickerage and Flora Spencer-Longhurst. Niall Buggy was excellent as the lecherous Van Ruijven, being the only character of real interest in an utterly boring story.
The set still looks like a cheap touring production, a loaded table even losing the will and attempting to throw itself off at one point, and the tinny, recorded music simply added to the tackiness of a play that so badly longs to be high-brow in one of London's most opulent theatres.
A horrible show. An uncomfortable, fidgety and ultimately forgettable night out and a complete waste of time and money. - Jake
30 Sep 08
Watching 'Girl with a pearl earring' on stage left me with a range of emotions. David Joss Buckley's adaptation leads the audience through laughter, tears, and uneasiness (due to the character of Van Ruijven's extreme attraction to Griet). It was noticeable that it was enjoyable for all the ages - there was a range from teenagers to men and women in their 80s. All in all I found it a thoroughly enjoyable evening at the theatre, as did all I spoke to afterwards. - Caitlin Strawford
Opened 29 Dec 1720. Closed in 1737 (partly for attacking the government), re-opened 1747. The current theatre opened on 4th July 1821 and was designed by Nash. The last theatre in London to use candles (1837). 888 seats. Society of London Theatre member.
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