'The Misanthrope' review — Sandra Oh brings great conviction to this gender-flipped Molière

Read our review of The Misanthrope, directed by Indhu Rubasingham, now in performances at the National Theatre to 1 August.

Summary

• Martin Crimp's version of The Misanthrope comes to the National Theatre
• Sandra Oh leads a gender-flipped production
• Oh brings great conviction and amusing bolshiness to the role
• Paul Chahidi and Tom Mison are fun in supporting roles

This is not playwright Martin Crimp’s first time updating Molière’s 17th-century classic. In 1996, he wrote a version that posited the crotchety Misanthrope as a playwright, in love with a glamorous actress but seething at the prevalence of celebrity culture. The cogency of that version was swiftly overshadowed by the celebrity casting of its revivals, with Uma Thurman and Roger Rees in New York, then Keira Knightley and Damian Lewis in London.

This production is not that version but a new one. Here, Crimp’s Misanthrope is a formidable literary author – and a woman, named Alice. Opening a week after Patrick Marber’s gender-flipped Glengarry Glen Ross at the Old Vic, it marks the UK stage debut of Killing Eve star Sandra Oh, who brings great conviction and amusing bolshiness to the role. Like a kettle that’s just about to whistle, she practically vibrates under the effort of bottling up her disdain for other people. More often, of course, she insists on speaking her mind, even when her views are unpopular. Having effectively been cancelled in Berlin for her use of a word that relates to war crimes, she’s not backing down.

It’s certainly not the gender-flipping that’s the issue in this production, which is directed by new National Theatre boss Indhu Rubasingham, and Oh proves as watchable on stage as she is on screen. But while it piles on a number of hot-button topics – from generational clashes to performative activism – once it’s thrown them in the ring it merely leaves them there.

This may well be the point: Molière’s original satirised the hypocrisies he saw in society without judging his characters. It stressed the challenge of staying true to ideals in a corrupt society. But if there are plenty of current, provocative references here, they’re flimsily addressed and leave little to chew over once the story peters out.

We never sense there’s much at stake for Alice. When her once-adoring fan, Imogen Elliott’s sweet-faced sycophant Esmée, uploads a viral video accusing her of inappropriate behaviour, there’s a whiff of Todd Field’s film Tár to the claims catching fire in the digital sphere, but no sense of consequence. Alice’s shunning of society amounts to little more than a whimper for everyone to put down their phones.

Still, scenes with her gay best friend John (Paul Chahidi, the glue), a playwright, are good fun, as are those with her lover Stefan (Tom Mison), an empty-headed actor who can’t keep his dick in his pants. Stefan’s entourage – which includes the bullish Claire (Abigail Cruttenden) and shrewd Indira (Rina Fatania) – neatly capture the vacuous endeavours of their influential circle and their attempts to control the narrative around them.

It looks the part in Robert Jones’s set too: a wealthy, vibrantly decorated house stuffed with modern art and sculptures which manages to narrowly swerve being garish, despite its gold trimmings. Giant paintings proffering the kind of squiggles some would call genius, while others would joke they could have done it themselves are, like the play itself, open to interpretation.

But Jones’s set arguably does too much heavy lifting in the final moments. Opening out to reveal a celestial, chandelier-dotted sky that dwarfs the gaggle of them as they rail against Alice’s final outburst, it’s this visual image, not Alice’s exiling herself, that leaves an impression.

The Misanthrope is at the National Theatre to 1 August. Book The Misanthrope tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: The Misanthrope (Photos by Marc Brenner)