Phaedra - NT 2023

I'm just in from seeing this and all I can say is: wow.

To address the concerns which have been aired here:

Running time is 2:45 now including the interval.

Yes there are blackouts which go on too long but when the lights come up I found it worth the wait.

The timing of the subtitles is still off but not enough to ruin the astonishing production.

and it'll only get better.

Like Simon Stone's "Yerma" 7 years ago this production is going to be the hottest ticket in town ( well maybe second hottest ticket after "Streetcar") - this is an utterly contemporary play in every way. The emotions are immediate and raw. The dialogue is tight and funny and packs a wallop when it needs to. The design is superb and there isn't a weak performance on the stage. I can't wait to see it again. it's thrilling.

I also saw this last night (the final preview, I think, so it should be locked in, and Simon Stone's daily rewrites should be over), and LOVED it! For me, it's a culture clash comedy, as well as a culture clash tragedy, so I think it intends to elicit the laughs it gets along the way: a very modern Phaedra!

The cast is universally wonderful!

Some spoilers follow. . .

The set features a shimmering glass cage trap, as in Simon Stone's "The Wild Duck," also similar to Stone's glass box in "Yerma," where it also felt like an examination room, with the audience in the position of therapist, examining Yerma's psychology from a distance.

This set has another layer still, beyond cage trap or exam room: it spins on it's axis, even as characters move around it, and mix themselves up in a variety of combinations. In that sense, the set feels, to me, like a giant cake mixer, spinning it's mix of cultural and experiential ingredients around, cooking these ingredients into a whole new cake.

The baking powder of the cake, catalyst of the plot, is Assad Bouab's Sofiane (avatar of Hippolytus from Seneca's play, though he isn't Janet McTeer's Phaedra's stepson, in this version, but the son of her deceased former lover).

Stone writes remarkably modern feeling characters (the stuff Archie Barnes's super-smart kid was babbling on about left me feeling positively ancient lol), but with the exception of Sofiane, who emerges from a culture of political persecution as a man who can no longer bear to be anything but open and honest, the other characters embody a quintessential civilised reserve. It is the repeated breaking of that sense of reserve that serves up the comedy.

Funnily enough, the play this most reminds me of is "God of Carnage," in which McTeer herself played one of four characters, whose reserved and thick veneer of civilised behaviour was smashed apart into bickering and savagery by an incident at school.

Here, there is no incident, but a person, in the form of Sofiane, who triggers the comedy and tragedy.

McTeer, as ever, is an absolute force of nature, but this is such a strong cast, with John McMillan's Eric exceptionally funny, as his character is the most recalcitrantly and pathetically civilised, even under enormous pressure, and Mackenzie Davis's Isolde, Eric's wife and Phaedra's daughter, more subtly funny, in the way she is so unwittingly and believably exactly like the mother she hates. And Paul Chahidi, always reliable, is magnificent here, as a man of languages, who bridges cultures, and yet still can't hold things together. When he begins to crack, like an intellectual Basil Fawlty, I belly laughed.

Ultimately, this play moves beyond "God of Carnage" into full Greek territory, and for my money, does so successfully and excellently.

I wouldn't rate this as highly as Stone's Yerma, which was a primal scream from the soul that still upsets me to think about today, as Phaedra doesn't merit the sympathy Billie Piper's Yerma did, nor does she even merit the symapthy of Marieke Heebink's supremely soulful and tragic "Medea," but by goodness, if you're going on a grand trip into self-entitlement, Janet McTeer is the force of nature to make it exciting. 4 and a half stars from me.

I am now looking forward to this. Has anyone seen the Yerma online? I missed it on stage; does the NT Live capture enough of the production's qualities?

Is this worth seeing???

Early results:

3 stars from Libby Purves, who usually loves everything
theatrecat.com/

4 from the Indy:
www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/culture/phaedra-review-janet-mcteer-national-theatre-b2279618.html

and 4 from the Standard

Two stars from the Guardian: 'tonally unsure'.

www.theguardian.com/stage/2023/feb/10/phaedra-review-janet-mcteer-simon-stone-national-theatre-lyttelton

It sounds to me like they had their press night WAAAAY too early if they are still having so many problems.

I am going to book later in the run so hopefully its sorted.

I refuse to believe Stone could stuff up that badly.

Though frankly, when did mixing comedy with drama become such a crime?

Did they just change the wording in one of their Marvel reviews?

I can’t comment on this production, but for general information: the Lyttelton stage has two spaces off it (one behind, one to the side) which are the same size as the stage. When shows used to play in rep, the set for whichever wasn’t playing performances would be stored in one of these spaces. For larger shows (like Angels in America), the spaces could be opened up and used as extensions of the stage space.

So it is definitely possible that there could be multiple sets for this play as you suggest.

He hasn't stuffed up. He's mixed comedy with drama, hasn't made either the principal engine, and for some, that is indeed a crime lol.

And I get it. Genre pleasures are denied if you don't choose one and hit it hard. I myself rate "The Unfriend" as a try-hard comedy, with only one scene that is laugh-out-loud funny (the toilet scene), and the rest relies on a superb cast to buoy it up. But that's because I take no pleasure in it as a satire or a drama or anything else. For me, I judge "The Unfriend" as a comedy, and it's not quite good enough to be good.

If I judged this as a comedy, it would be three stars of laughs, hamstrung by it's serious pretensions.

If I judged this as a tragedy, it would be three stars of character-based fatefulness, hamstrung by it's lightweight comedy.

But to me, this feels more ambitious than that. It feels multi-dimensional. It creates characters and family relationships that are modern, witty and believable. It throws in a dramatic catalyst, and then does multiple fascinating things all at once, being funny, being dramatic, but mostly serving as a reflective commentary (we literally study the relationships through glass from multiple angles) on how bonded all these very modern relationships are, how deep our roots in family and community are, in a world full of phones, selfishness, scheming and distractions - who is and who isn't a grown-up.

Simply put, I don't want to use genre archetypes to dismiss this, cos it feels deeper than a ride on the genre rollercoaster. For me, the tonal wobbliness is a strength, as real life is "tonally unsure," after all lol.

Tbh, I read this as probably more of the mocking of particular socio-class types, with blended Greek tragedy.

Bless you Simon Stone for that mocking, absolutely my brew, and not hard to see why The Guardian in particular would respond with two stars.

Probably more to say after an am coffee.

I guess the starting point is whether it works as an entertainment, and it certainly did for me – it holds you throughout; stimulating, quick-fire banter, acute social observation, laugh out loud moments, unexpected twists ..

At the same time, it is clunky. It’s almost like one of those Lennon and McCartney tunes where one contributes the start, the other then end, and cross your fingers George Martin can engineer a bridge/transition (not claiming Phaedra is the theatrical equiv. of A Day in the Life). But yes, 'tonal' variance.

There are more dimensions to ponder. For example, I’m not sure the issue of revenge vs. fate is resolved (need a second visit), and it seemed much of what you take away hinges on your reading of that very traditional tension.

IIrc, we know nothing of Helen’s background, only that she washes up in Morocco in 1978-79, after a non-identified Uni, a beautiful statuesque young woman. So, an intentionally black slate. We only see her now, 40+ years later; a successful (Ministerial) politician, wife of a Shah-supporting Iranian of very considerable illegitimate wealth, and owner of enough properties to be able to transfer ownership to her children (standard tax dodge).

To be clearer about the entitled, privileged, middle-class woman; the only ‘f’ word not used in the production was ‘Feminist’. But it is there, in bold, between most lines.

From my own modest but not insignificant life experience, I have known women like Helen; who identify as Feminist, effectively using the identity as a cover for do-whatever-the-f***-you-want and just walk away after. Didn’t matter where the husband’s money came from – priorities are wealth and status, didn't matter who might become collateral damage – her husband/s, other women, other women and children, all of whom pay the price: if ‘men’ can do it so can I.

It was, apparently, ‘sexual liberation’ and certainly not predatory or adulterous in nature; it was never feminism, though. It was class entitlement, every bit as much as Boris Johnson’s marital antics have been. At least for the type we see here.

My preference might have been not for Helen to be a generic Shadow Minister, but maybe someone senior in media broadcast or print (in management or on screen). I dunno .. maybe a Joan Bakewell-type character .. a Goddess too far, perhaps.

Kudos to Simon Stone for getting in some very decent jabs and for the overall ambition (writer/director), and – *deep breath* – to Rufus and Co for the nads.

Imo, perfectly reasonable to say it doesn’t land perfectly, or perhaps even comfortably, but time flew for me, I smiled often and I laughed.

www.historytoday.com/miscellanies/helen-whore-and-curse-beauty