‘Have you ever had the feeling you are being watched?’ Tom Ripley asks at the very beginning of this brand new stage-adaptation of the classic psychological thriller novel The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith.
Opening at Oxford Playhouse and coming soon to the West End, this production retells the story of Ripley, a New York loner and layabout who, after bumping into wealthy businessman Herbert Greenleaf, travels to Europe on an all-expenses-paid mission to bring back his wayward son Dickie, who is shirking his family obligations while living the highlife in Italy. Ripley and Greenleaf Jnr. meet, become friends, and thus
Ripley asks the same question again and again throughout the play, as his paranoia grows in accordance with his crimes. This breaking-the-fourth-wall style, (where the actors turn and address the audience directly AKA Fleabag) works wonderfully as it allows us to really get inside the protagonist’s head and helps us understand his behaviour.
Ed McVey’s (of The Crown) portrayal of the awkward, anguished Ripley is masterful, although at times I felt that Director Mark Leipacher gives us too much of the Anguished Mr. Ripley and not enough of the Talented one.
Whether the ghosts (a la Banquo in Macbeth) and trench-coated figures at the back of the stage are strictly necessary remains to be seen, although they do add to the tension, but this heightened sense of drama means that Dickie Greenleaf (Bruce Herbelin-Earle) and his friend/lover Marge (former Eastenders star Maisie Smith) READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH MAISIE HERE are rather understated and sometimes engulfed by the furious pace of the play.
Leipacher‘s staging however certainly sets the mood: uncluttered with a big square hole in the middle from which the actors often enter and leave, and clever use of neon-lighting alerts us to the many different locations in which the action happens.
‘Have you ever had the feeling you are being watched?’ the now resigned and exhausted Tom Ripley asks us one final time at the very end which he then follows up with ‘and did you get away with it?’
Did this current production of The Talented Mr. Ripley get away with it? Just about.
Edward Bliss
THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY runs at Oxford Playhouse until Saturday October 18 https://www.oxfordplayhouse.com/events/the-talented-mr-ripley
