DAVID Hare’s thrilling new play, The Red Barn, based on the 1968 novel La Main by Georges Simenon is a charmingly dark exploration of corruption, lust and jealousy. Set in small town Connecticut in 1969, The Red Barn tells the tale of Donald Dodd, played subtly and rather wonderfully by Mark Strong, his wife Ingrid (Hope Davis) and their friend Mona (Elizabeth Debicki).
Hope Davis ( Ingrid Dodd), Nigel Whitme (Ray Sanders) and Anna Skellern (Patricia Ashbridge) in The Red Barn
The play opens as this trio retreat from a horrific blizzard to Donald and Ingrid’s home after they’ve been at a friend’s rather glamorous party. However, the fourth member of their group is missing. Mona’s husband, Ray, does not successfully make it back to the house. Donald does the right thing and unashamedly sets back out into the storm to search for Ray, but to no avail.
What started as a relatively simple story jumps up a gear, as we watch Donald face his demons in this two-hour, no-interval thriller, burdened by guilt, incompleteness and confusion in the arms of two women. The portrayal of Donald’s undoing takes us through revelations of the past and innumerable questions over the death of Ray and who really played a part.
Hope Davis in The Red Barn
Robert Icke’s direction is refined and shrewd, though at points feels a little stilted as we transition between scenes. Undoubtedly, Icke’s actors certainly know how to command to stage with Strong’s poker face and Debicki’s cold desperation and emotional negligence providing explosive tension throughout. Indisputably, the hardest role of all is that of Mona, played with beautiful repression by Hope Davis. With fewer lines and stage time than her counterparts, Davis conveys the quietly intimidating wife with a terrifying amount of power and hold over her husband, with total ease.
Elizabeth Debicki as Mona Sanders in The Red Barn
Without a doubt, the star of the show is Bunny Christie’s ingenious and highly adventurous set design. Thanks to the deliciously frustrating black squares which constantly slide up and down the stage, much like the viewfinder of a camera, the audience never witness an entire scene at any one moment. Unanswered questions play a key part in the plot and this theme is beautifully underpinned by the elegant and nimble mise en scène.
Mark Strong as Donald Dodd and Elizabeth Debicki
Icke takes away our freedom to look wherever we choose, the traditional benefit of live theatre, which is extremely clever. Unfortunately, there are unquestionably points where the cinematic design upstages the onstage action. Despite this, this stirring whodunit is a feast for the senses that is well worth a watch.
by Heather Doughty
@nationaltheatre
The Red Barn runs at the Lyttelton at the National Theatre until January 17, 2017
National Theatre, Upper Ground, London SE1 9PX
Box office tel: 020 7452 3000
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