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Synopsis Karin is a young wife, an older sister and an only daughter, whose kaleidoscopic interior world is a constantly changing picture where the boundaries between the ordinary and extraordinary are becoming increasingly blurred. Haunting and sensual, Through a Glass Darkly is the iconic 1961 film by legendary Swedish director and screenwriter Ingmar Bergman, which has been adapted for stage by Andrew Upton, co-artistic director of Sydney Theatre Company. World Premiere
If one thing is clear from Ingmar Bergman’s gloomy Oscar-winning 1961 film Through a Glass Darkly, adapted for the stage by Jenny Worton, and directed by Michael Attenborough, it’s a warning about where to book your summer holidays. Chances of fun and relaxation are minimal in a remote cottage on a bleak island with just your immediate family for company.
Bergman, of course, liked Faro so much when he made the film there that he built a house and stayed forever. The house was on the site of the garden outpost where troubled young Max (Minus in the film) performs his strange, symbolic play with his sister Karin.
Surprisingly, this “performance” is replaced in the play with a mere reference to the script, a missed opportunity to theatricalise the incipient incest of Karin and Max. Otherwise, the sombre quadrille of guilt, madness and recrimination follows Bergman closely without the exceptional brilliance of the acting and the oppressive grey beauty of the landscape.
Ruth Wilson, however, gives a fine central performance as the unstable, bipolar Karin, enslaved by the voices in the wallpaper of her attic retreat, standing carelessly naked, facing upstage, or careering sensuously around in her slip and nightgown, repelling the sexual attentions of her own husband, the careworn doctor Martin (an emaciated Justin Salinger).
The three people – husband, father, brother – who love Karin most can’t cope with her. The film must have seemed shocking in 1961 but, boy, does this seem over-familiar, almost clichaic, now. Also, the rhythmic pulse of the film is unsuited to the theatre. Strangely, you feel you’re watching something in the wrong medium.
Martin has syringes and sedatives at the ready. Paternal David (a rather stolid Ian McElhinney) is wrapped up in his writing and lectures, ready to exploit Karin’s story as he did that of her deceased mother. And the student Max (Dimitri Leonidas seems far too old for a hormonally confused 17-year-old) lacks love and encouragement.
Tom Scutt’s design is a clever arrangement of dismal shades and shadows, while Dan Jones’ sound replaces Bergman’s Bach cello suite with some intense flourishes in which Wilson, radiant with bizarre religiosity, submits to her demons, puckering that extraordinary rhomboid mouth of hers into an instrument of inner darkness. In only her third stage appearance (after Philistines at the National and as Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire at the Donmar), Wilson is a major new star, not yet hitched to the right wagon.
When attending a play adapted from a Bergman film you know you're not going to get a light domestic comedy. Sure enough this is an often harrowing look at a family beset by psychological problems; it's also far better than the somewhat similar Polar Bears, seen recently at the Donmar. Ruth Wilson is one of our more intense younger actresses, but here she is superb as Karin, beseiged by voices proclaiming a second coming but all too painfully aware and ultimately accepting of her plight. There is excellent support from Ian McElhinney and Dimitri Leonidas as her father and brother battling demons of their own and Justin Salinger as her husband watching helplessly from the sidelines. Through a Glass Darkly is not a play to be enjoyed exactly, but it offers rewards in other ways. - David Baxter
29 Jul 10
a very long slog, this one. no ambiguity, no wit, no-one you care about, everything explained to death. the dreariest of dreary quality theatre. the actors do their best with the awkward dialogue and laboured scenes, but it's a losing battle. - fred
08 Jul 10
WOS are still having trouble with this website - the review at the bottom of this page was not written in respect of this play. The wonder of theatre is two people, sat side by side, can react so differently to a play. I found this production so stilted, the acting so wooden that even the wonderful Ruth Wilson, playing the disturbed Karin, could not redeem it for me. Maybe that's my loss, but I wonder if Michael Attenborough himself wasn't lost trying to navigate his way through this bleak play? Maybe the problem was turning a film into a stage play? Anyhow, a muted response, after 90 minutes, from the often enthusiastic Almeida audience spoke volumes. - rds
08 Jul 10
Yet another film I haven’t seen ends up on stage. This time, Ingmar Bergman’s study of a family’s attempts to cope with mental illness within it.
The husband, a doctor, just tries to deal with the practical implications and consequences. The teenage brother is scared; he just isn’t mature enough to deal with it at all. The father, who is reliving what happened to his wife, has a complex bag of emotional responses that include running away, intellectual curiosity and hopelessness……and that’s it really; yet somehow, it makes for a compelling and fascinating 90 minutes. It speeds along at quite a pace in a way that draws you in without seeming rushed; it doesn’t waste words but doesn’t linger risking your attention or your patience. Michael Attenborough’s staging is simple yet atmospheric (helped by superb use of music and sound by the chap behind Kursk). The performances are all excellent and Ruth Wilson is yet again positively mesmerizing. I’m not going to analyse why I found it a very satisfying evening, I just did! - Gareth James
30 Jun 10
Whilst having the stage rights to a Bergman film may be an achievement, sadly, this wasn't worth it. Nothing is ever known about the characters so there's nothing to relate to, and so there's no emotional engagement. In Polar Bears, which dealt with a similar subject, there was a backstory to provide interest. Like some of England's performances, this is just intense 90 minutes of angst and histrionic behaviour with an inevitable conclusion... - dgr1
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