Review Round-Ups

Review Round-up: Fond Farewell at Hampstead?

Richard Nelson‘s Farewell to the Theatre opened at the Hampstead Theatre earlier this week (7 March 2012, previews from 1 March 2012).

The play follows legendary actor-manager Harley Granville Barker’s estrangement from theatre, as he exiles himself to Williamstown, Massachusetts during World War I.

Directed by Roger Michell, Ben Chaplin plays the role of Granville Barker, alongisde a cast that includes Jemma Redgrave, Tara Fitzgerald, William French, Andrew Havill, Louis Hilyer and Jason Watkins.

The production continues on the Hampstead’s Main Stage until 7 April 2012.


Michael Coveney
Whatsonstage.com

★★

“What is in effect a sober conversation piece with insider historical information is presented with stark clarity in Roger Michell’s admirably cast production … But the flame of the play, and of Ben Chaplin’s performance, burns quite low, ending in an almost embarrassingly unremarkable Mummers Play in the garden … Granville Barker has rediscovered that theatre matters, but this is all talk, not show, and it’s a struggle to remain interested for the uninterrupted 105 minutes’ playing time. Still, it’s very good to see Chaplin on the stage again. Jemma Redgrave as the widow manageress, Henry’s sister, emotes quietly in the background and Tara Fitzgerald as a flighty lecturer impresses once again with her ability to inhabit any period or indeed costume without seeming false or unnatural. As a testament to Granville Barker, the play is obviously positive but also too knowing for an audience unaware of his then radical, now taken-for-granted, approach to Shakespeare.”

Paul Taylor
Independent
★★★


“Michell once again
turns up trumps with a production exquisitely attuned to the Chekhovian
mix of rueful melancholy and sharp-eyed objectivity about the absurd
… This new work almost combines
elements from its two predecessors in that it is an agonising comedy … Radiating languid irony and emotional reserve, Ben Chaplin
is superb in the role of protagonist … Jason Watkins‘s endearing Frank Spraight … Sunk in sardonic disillusion, Barker is in a
personal and professional limb … It
boasts some lovely performances (especially from Jemma Redgrave and Tara
Fitzgerald
). But the echoes of the Shakespeare feel contrived; the
presentation of Barker through his effect on a campus squabble feels
faintly too non-momentous; and the happy-ish Mummers’ Play ending
unearned.”

Henry Hitchings
Evening Standard
★★

Ben
Chaplin
does an unshowy job of conveying his character’s passion for
theatre and simultaneous desire to change it with a mix of playful
charm, geniality and soulfulness … A touching Jemma Redgrave … is embroiled in a furtive relationship with the
much younger Charles, and we understand that she and Granville-Barker
share certain frustrations. But this is underdeveloped, and Tara
Fitzgerald
feels underused in the role. Jason Watkins makes the
strongest impression as Frank Spraight … Through Frank, Nelson introduces touches of poignancy and moments
of humour. Yet Granville-Barker’s emotional turmoil is thinly sketched. Roger Michell’s well-cast production has a quiet dignity. But Farewell to the Theatre suffers from a cloying earnestness. Granville-Barker’s
pioneering talents don’t come across. The writing, though elegant, is
bloodless; the key relationships are undernourished.”

Libby Purves
The Times
★★

“Frank Spraight, beautifully played by Jason Watkins
as initially a bit of a buffoon, finally dignified … Chaplin’s
performance is low-key, repressed with flashes of anger. I found
it gripping … Farewell to the Theatre is a play
for people who already care about the theatre, and at a hundred minutes
it is a pretty slow-burn. Jemma Redgrave is impressive as Henry’s sister
who keeps the boarding-house; Andrew Havill has a curiously pointless
role as a visiting cousin … It is only the introduction of an
invisible villain, “Professor Weston”, which brings the play to life;
the most dramatic scene is related, albeit with brilliant force, by
Barker … It suitably echoes the real Barker’s credo: that his art is a
living, nourishing form of communication and consolation, not an
insider hobby or a vehicle for show-offs and visual effects. If that
fellowship of feeling and philosophical questing is what theatre is
about, it should not get mired in technicality and scholarship, and
certainly not in spite.”

Michael Billington
The Guardian
★★

Richard Nelson‘s extraordinary play…combines a command of realistic detail with a sense of suffering and loss that genuinely evokes the Russian masters … There is not a lot of plot:
simply a mesmerising record of a group of people all in flight from
their own unhappiness … Roger Michell‘s exquisite production
also fulfils the play’s mission of interesting us in characters because
of who they are as much as what they do. Ben Chaplin has just the right
air of thwarted idealism as Granville Barker … Jason Watkins as the peripatetic Dickensian
burying his sadness under a Pickwickian exterior and Tara Fitzgerald as
the hopelessly lovelorn Beatrice are also first-rate. And although
Jemma Redgrave, as the widowed manager of the Williamstown
boardinghouse, spends much of her time laying and clearing tables,
everything she does reveals her unhappiness in a way that Chekhov would
have approved.”

Paul Callan
Daily Express
★★

Ben Chaplin captures, with much
thoughtfulness, the sense of desolation that Granville-Barker
experienced when he slipped away from the theatre, fame and the hypnotic
power of the Bright Lights. You witness his inner anguish and the
inevitable fact that theatrical ideas are still spinning in his head … There are some neat
performances, in particular that of Frank (Jason Watkins), who takes his
one-man Charles Dickens show around America … Tara Fitzgerald…excellent as the young actress-cum-lecturer
Beatrice … Young student Charles…a neat performance by William
French
Jemma Redgrave is a suffering
Dorothy … Hers is one of the most beautiful voices on the English stage and she uses it cleverly with its sad cadences. Roger Michell directs firmly
in this sad picture of English expats in safe America during war-torn
1916.”

Quentin Letts
Daily Mail
★★

“A sweet, sorrowful, defiant play about the cultural bond of
drama … Jason
Watkins
gives a beautiful performance as the nobly discreet husband of
an ill wife … Ben Chaplin combines a bewitching inner stillness with an almost balletic quality when he moves. We
never see the production of Twelfth Night (thank goodness). Instead, we
meet its nervous director (done well by Louis Hilyer, all jerky hand
movements) … Andrew Havill, playing a lonely chump, is as good as the
rest of the cast. Director Roger Michell schools them well but should maybe ask them to speak louder … It is perfectly credible this lot would miss English
plays … There
may be something a little thespily self-indulgent about the enterprise
yet the characters are shrewdly written, prettily caught and the whole
thing classily staged.”

– Amy Sheppard