Phaedra

In an age where studio theatre is equated with intimacy, how exciting it is
to be back at the Riverside Studios where the name is synonymous with two of
the capital’s most epic spaces. These chilly, high-ceilinged rooms have
often played host to some of our most innovative and challenging
theatremakers. And so it proves again with this production by a brand-new
classical company, Concentric Circles, whose no less exciting arrival this
staging heralds.

While the company was due to launch with Colin Firth taking the title role in
Hamlet, subsequently regretfully shelved owing to the star’s film
commitments, they are to be applauded for the rigour with which they’ve
applied themselves instead to a far less commercial and more difficult choice.
Racine’s Phaedra is hard work at the best of times. The pitfalls are
many – not least because drama critics are forever pointing out how much
more effective it is in the original French – but also because of the
relentless formality of its language in any tongue, and the alien emotion of
its subject.

It’s difficult to become involved, yet alone passionate, in its story,
despite the fact that it’s about an all-consuming passion – that of a
woman, Phaedra, for her stepson, Hippolytus. This classic story, based on
Euripides’ Hippolytus, has him rejecting her because he is already in
love with Aricia. But it really is hard to care.

That’s despite the fire and fury of a performance wracked in despair from
Sheila Gish, who is increasingly coming to resemble Bette Davis in full
melodramatic vein. This is a role that was most recently taken, with gravely
brooding finesse, by Diana Rigg in the Almeida staging at the Albery; Gish
pours more naked emotion into it.

Christopher Fettes‘s otherwise soberly measured production – beautifully
designed by Agnes Treplin with walls streaked in blood – surrounds Gish with
a terrific ensemble, true to this new company’s ideals which are to nurture
the development of young actors by forging collaborations between them and
senior members of the acting profession.

Those aims are entirely to be applauded. So is this finely formal
production. In welcoming such high ambitions and standards, however, my
ultimate resistance is to do with the play itself.

– Mark Shenton