The Forsyte Saga: Parts 1 and 2 at the Park Theatre – review

John Galsworthy’s epic family saga The Forsyte Saga – about an eminent family’s progress over the years of the late 19th and early 20th century – is a brilliant, sprawling picture of its age. It’s already been made into a 26-part television serial (in the 1960s), a ten-part series in 2002, and is about to get its third small screen incarnation courtesy of PBS Masterpiece.

When Shaun McKenna and Lin Coghlan were asked to produce a radio version, it ran to a hefty 15 hours. So why have the same duo decided to compress its multiple storylines into a two-play, five-hour adaptation for the 200-seat Park Theatre?

The answer seems to be a belief that less can be more. This stripped-back telling concentrates Galsworthy’s rich story which pivots around the tragically ill-matched relationship between the upright Soames Forsyte and his wife Irene – a doomed passion (on his side) and an imprisonment (on hers) – into an examination of how unhappiness can spread through generations.

By making Fleur, Soames’ beloved daughter of his second marriage, the narrator of her own story, it binds many disparate elements together and, while it lacks Galsworthy’s sociological sweep in Josh Roche’s superbly controlled production for Troupe Theatre, brilliantly acted by its nine-strong cast, it proves a gripping theatrical event.

Its two parts, designed to be seen individually or together, are created as separate plays with a complete story in both, though I suspect if you arrive to see the second play Fleur, you might wish you’d booked for Irene first. Seen as a pair, as they were on press day, they are particularly satisfying.

Great imaginative force and commitment have been applied by all concerned to bring them to life. Anna Yates has provided simple but detailed period costumes that carefully whisk from 1886 to 1927, but kept the setting bare: a red-carpeted stage with red velvet curtains for the Victorian proprieties of the first part, the same carpet without curtains for the modern age of the second.

Alex Musgrave makes clever use of lighting, spotlighting scenes, bathing the beautiful Irene in golden light as she dances with her soon-to-be lover Bosinney, turning the scene dark and frightening when Soames, catastrophically, insists on his marital rights and rapes her, an act that precipitates a schism in the family.

A few chairs stand in for many things, most comically becoming a boat when in Fleur, the haplessly incompetent Michael Mont attempts to woo her by punting her across the river. A broken light lying on the floor suggests the chaos of the General Strike and the heartbreak Fleur suffers.

The barebones style is potent but it’s the power of the storytelling that carries the day. Roche pays close attention to the texture of the adaptation, letting its humour bubble to the surface, giving weight to its revelations about the powerlessness of women within marriage, allowing its warped and contained emotion constantly to peer through.

He is helped by pitch-perfect performances from his tireless cast. As Soames, Joseph Millson perfectly portrays the self-satisfied rectitude of a man of property who believes that his wealth and respectability entitle him to control the world around him, but also self-doubt and emotion of someone who cannot express his feelings and cannot – crucially – possess the one thing that is of any value to him. He played the same part in the radio adaptation, and it shows in the depth he brings to the portrayal, conveyed through tiny gestures and clenched jaw; however badly Soames behaves, Millson constantly suggests the sadness within.

But subtlety and nuance are all around him. As Irene, Fiona Hampton is still and dignified, yet suggesting constant ferment beneath the surface, her intelligence and desire stifled by the ‘Forsyte Exchange’ that operates around her; Flora Spencer-Longhurst makes Fleur a most attractive, smart guide to family matters, sophisticated, sharp and selfish, but devastatingly broken by events she doesn’t always understand.

Meanwhile, Jamie Wilkes offers a wonderfully endearing double act as both young Jo Forsyte, keeper of the family’s moral conscience and its artistic flame, and as the aspiring Michael Mont, knowing he is always playing second best in Fleur’s affections to her cousin Jon, played with some glamour by Andy Rush, who also encapsulates the dashing but ruthless Bosinney.

Emma Amos and Florence Roberts flash through a great array of roles with lovely detail in each as do Michael Lumsden and Nigel Hastings. They bring an entire world to life – an epic in miniature.