Synopsis London,1934. Melanie Klein is one of the most admired, yet controversial, psycho-analysts of her time, renowned for her unique insight into the secret world of childhood. But her relationship with her psycho-analyst daughter Melitta has been damaged almost beyond repair, and an unexpected message from abroad brings it to bitter confrontation. The news also poses a mystery that even Mrs. Klein, despite her genius for analysis, cannot solve. It is left to her new assistant, a refugee from Hitler’s Berlin, to find a possible answer.
Thea Sharrock's production of Nicholas Wright’s Mrs Klein opened at the Almeida last week (29 October 2009, previews from 22 October), marking the play's first major London revival since its premiere at the National Theatre in 1988.
Mrs Klein, which replaces the postponed world premiere of Samuel Adamson’s A Quiet Island in the Almeida’s autumn programme (See News, 14 May 2009), centres on admired but controversial psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, who, despite her expertise, endures a fraught relationship with her own daughter.
Many overnight and weekend critics made reference to the Almeida's other recent 'therapy play' - Duet for One, which they warmly received back in February, prompting the Guardian's Michael Billington to dub the Islington venue “analyst's corner”. But it seems most of them enjoy being on the couch, as they praised Sharrock's rare revival and in particular the “brilliance” of Higgins in the title role. A few complained of a sluggish opening and the “elusive” meaning of Wright's script, but overall the tomatoes were fresh, and Mrs Klein seems to have made a very timely entrance as we enter awards season.
Michael Coveney on Whatsonstage.com (four stars) - “Thea Sharrock’s revival may be a replacement for the Samuel Adamson play that never happened, but it punches its weight and proves that family business among the Jewish psychoanalysts ... is not necessarily a slapstick comedy … The opening scene is a bit slow, and there were some nervy passages of play on opening night, but once combat is joined in Tim Hatley’s blood red room of books, portraits and wooden side cabinets, the sparks fly between Clare Higgins as the intimidating guru, Zoe Waites as Melitta and Nicola Walker as her protégé newly arrived from Budapest … All three women act beautifully and I can only offer praise for the period hair pieces, the costumes and even the sound of Ian Dickinson”
Rhoda Koenig in the Independent (three stars) - “Nicholas Wright's 1988 play, directed by Thea Sharrock, has a fascinating woman at its centre, which is one of its problems. Klein is so much bolder and more complex than Melitta or the only other character, Paula ... that their conflict takes on the aspect of a splendid animal baited by mice … The lack of contrast between the characters also muffles excitement, and the evening is further damped down by slow pacing and understated acting … While suffering from the general lack of oomph, Clare Higgins' Klein is utterly convincing as a woman of superb confidence, grandly amused at her own intellect, as if it had a separate existence as the precocious child she never had.”
Michael Billington in the Guardian (four stars) - “The Almeida is turning into analyst's corner … As in much of Pinter, we are watching a study in displacement in which Paula slowly supplants Melitta as daughter, patient and colleague. Like Brecht's Mother Courage, Mrs Klein also seems to destroy the children she has sought to protect. Even if the ultimate meaning is elusive, Thea Sharrock's production explores every cranny of a complex text and is vividly acted. Clare Higgins' Mrs Klein is an intriguing mix of intellectual pioneer and failed mother who has treated her children with the professional detachment she brings to her patients: it is her realisation of her inadequacies that makes her performance so moving.”
Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph (three stars) - “These days, a visit to the Almeida sometimes feels more like a session with a psychiatrist than a trip to a show … As a writer, Wright often gives the illusion that he is a detached figure. On this occasion, however, it is hard to escape the conclusion that he is highly sceptical of psychoanalysis … Nevertheless, for much of its first half Mrs Klein is often grindingly dull, meticulously acted though it is in Thea Sharrock’s production, set in a Rothko-red lounge that is not so much a room as a womb with a view. In the second half, however, during bitter confrontations between mother and daughter, the play fitfully flares into dramatic life. The great Clare Higgins combines a wry, dry wit with deep emotion as Mrs Klein and her healing tears at the end are deeply moving. Zoe Waites brings a corrosive bitterness to the stage as her daughter, and there is strong work from Nicola Walker as the assistant who increasingly seems like a Pinteresque cuckoo in the nest.”
Ian Shuttleworth in the Financial Times (three stars) - “Claire Higgins’ brilliance at portraying torrents of emotion is matched by her astuteness in suppressing them. Her Mrs Klein is all about control, both of herself and of others, until those moments when she loses it … Nicola Walker as Paula grows during the evening from a position of ingenuousness to one of knowledge, analytic adroitness and even a control of her own ... Wright’s play is clever, amusing and poignant, sometimes all at once. However, there seems to be a complacent undercurrent to assumptions about the psychoanalytically literate audience … Despite the rise in estimates of the number of us who suffer from mental illness at one time or another, it is still often seen as something of a luxury to be able to afford to have such problems.””
Susannah Clapp in the Observer - “What makes Clare Higgins so strong an actress? Above all, the ability to show herself altering. On the spot. She seems to change the quality of her flesh, and to do so while remaining completely still. Nicholas Wright is the dramatist above all others who enables her to unleash the shocks of character gradually; he creates women in whom surprises are buried deep … There's everything schematic about this: good versus bad daughter, future versus the past. But it transmits: Zoe Waites is so convincing as the door-slamming, coffee-cup-banging, suddenly melting daughter, and Nicola Walker so vibrantly needy, predatory and intelligent as the cuckoo in the nest.””
Henry Hitchings in the Evening Standard (four stars) - “Clare Higgins’ Klein is a tyrannical figure, controlled yet wilful. Her filing cabinet has separate drawers for the Ego and the Id; she believes in regimenting everything she can, though the play shows that a totally compartmentalised life is impossible … The drama is a psychological power struggle between the three, in which their initially well-defined roles become ambiguous. Wright’s play is a rich one for performers. When Higgins’ Klein throws her wine in Melitta’s face the gesture, which could seem overblown, is satisfyingly outrageous, and it’s typical of a performance that is narcissistically unpleasant yet also is compellingly sympathetic ... Nevertheless, Wright’s erudite play contains too much talk. There is an excess of psychoanalytic terminology, including some leaden stuff about ;symbolic urine' and 'persecutory delusion'. And while this gets laughs, there’s a persistent sense that Mrs Klein is cerebral rather than wise.”
Mothers and daughters on the stage were given a whole new twist by Nicholas Wright in his wonderfully skilful play Mrs Klein, first seen at the National Theatre in 1988 but now performed all over the world.
Thea Sharrock’s revival may be a replacement for the Samuel Adamson play that never happened, but it punches its weight and proves that family business among the Jewish psychoanalysts - Mrs Klein herself, her daughter Melitta and a new disciple, Paula, gathered in a Hampstead drawing room in 1934 - is not necessarily a slapstick comedy.
More of a tragedy, in fact, as Mrs Klein’s relationship with her daughter unravels in the aftermath of her son’s death in a climbing accident. Maternal guilt and responsibility have become muddled in professional jargon, the great stylistic mode of Wright’s play, and straightforward expressions of love lost in a miasma of analytical interpretation.
Melanie Klein, a pioneer in her own right, used to say she was a Freudian but not an Anna Freudian, and there’s a passage about dreams which dramatically rebounds on itself to prove a point about the old bat’s tunnel vision. “No hard feelings?” says her daughter; “Not on a conscious level!”
The opening scene is a bit slow, and there were some nervy passages of play on opening night, but once combat is joined in Tim Hatley’s blood red room of books, portraits and wooden side cabinets, the sparks fly between Clare Higgins as the intimidating guru, Zoe Waites as Melitta and Nicola Walker as her protégé newly arrived from Budapest.
There are two periods of compressed night time, delicately handled in Neil Austin’s lighting, in a play that otherwise has a satisfying forward momentum geared to a series of merciless exposures and revelations.
The three women could be more Jewish, perhaps - did I miss Mrs K’s response to the question of is there anything worse than a bossy Central European Jewish mother (“I hope”)? - and Higgins doesn’t convey the imperial silliness of the late Gillian Barge in the original, even though she fights through to a magnificent tearful lament for her “lost” children.
All three women act beautifully and I can only offer praise for the period hair pieces, the costumes and even the sound of Ian Dickinson, though a string quartet fades on the gramophone without anyone removing the needle Mrs Klein placed there carefully one minute before.
Acting at its very best, especially from the sublime Clare Higgins. This play had me gripped from beginning to end. Intense, funny, moving, complex. This production is highly recommended. - Paul Wallis
28 Nov 09
After Pains of Youth yesterday, more middle European angst but Nicholas Wright's Mrs. Klein is much more successful. Thea Sharrock's production is occasionally heavy going but the shifting balance of power between three psychologists, including a mother and daughter, is intriguing. Zoe Waites and Nicola Walker (who has made a very welcome return to Spooks) provide exceptional support to the remarkable Clare Higgins, who is a trained therapist herself. Her Mrs. Klein has treated her own children as subjects to develop her theories of psychology with disastrous results and her final descent into sobbing grief is deeply affecting. Mrs. Klein is not an easy play to follow at times but it rewards concentration. - David Baxter
26 Nov 09
I agree with a comment here, I also found the characters to be a manipulative, heartless bunch and certainly not the sort one would want to leave a child alone with! Perhaps, revealingly, Mrs Klein's ambitions are shown to be divided when she tells Paula Heimann to go to America - they pay better there? Clare Higgins, who is a front runner to be Britain's finest stage actress gave, for me, a performance which had a bit too much of the Sherlock Holmes about it and with an intensity I found, frankly, distracting. Certainly both mother and daughter, as portrayed, deserved each other. Psychoanalysis has more than a whiff of astrology about it for my liking. The biggest market (I chose the word carefully) is in New York City, followed closely by West Coast America. More than once did I feel inclined to bang the Klein/Schmideberg heads together. Mrs Klein's obsession with all things anal is no doubt what attracted her to psychoanalysis in the first place - after all it has anal at its heart!? Terrific staging which one has come to expects from the Almeida, didn't alter the fact that this was an unworthy revival. Come on Mr Attenborough there's a wealth of material out there that's far better for the choosing. - sandall@msn.com
08 Nov 09
I’m not entirely sure why I left the theatre unsatisfied. This is the story of the (almost) famous psychoanalyst and her relationship with her daughter at the time of her son’s death. The first half is rather dull, but it certainly comes to life in the second. The three actresses, led by the ever wonderful Clare Higgins, are all excellent. Maybe it’s because I didn’t really like any of the characters; they’re a manipulative heartless bunch! I never really felt engaged, and even from the fourth row (maybe because of the low stage) I felt as if I was observing something far away. - Gareth James
03 Nov 09
Superb acting - especially from Clare Higgins - definitely the best actress on the English stage! And a greatly intense and moving production. - Alexandra
30 Oct 09
SENSATIONAL! Yet another masterclass in acting from Ms. Higgins. The other 2 aren't half bad either. AMAZING stuff.
P.S. Not for the hard of thought. Yes I mean you, you idiot under 26 year old coughers, talkers, twittering, morons. Learn some F-----g manners! - joesmith
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