Immediately
after its Hampstead run, this adaptation of the Oscar-winning 1981 film
transfers to the West End. Its success there will depend at least
partly on the degree to which Miriam Buether’s set can be re-created in
the less flexible environment of the Gielgud Theatre. Buether, with her
customary flair and audacity, has turned the entire Hampstead space
into the 1924 Paris Olympic stadium, with not only a central “field” on
which most of the acting takes place, but a running track through the
audience on all four sides for the real action.
The movie’s screenwriter Colin Yelland may have been over-optimistic
when he declared to Hollywood in 1981, “The British are coming!”, but
now that the rest of the world is coming to Britain, the intertwined
stories of runners Harold Abrahams (played by James McArdle) and Eric
Liddell (Jack Lowden) make a fine Olympic-season project. Mike Bartlett
adapts with respect for, but not slavish dependence on, the screenplay;
he does not, for instance, reschedule the Great Court Run around the
perimeter of Trinity College, Cambridge from noon as in the film to
midnight as in real life. He utilises the stage’s greater ability to
open up to the protagonists’ inner voices, showing Abrahams’
preoccupation with his never-present father and in particular Liddell’s
devout brand of muscular Christianity, which led him to refuse to run
in an Olympic heat on a Sunday.
Ed Hall uses all his considerable adroitness in directing a cast that
also includes Tam Willams and Simon Williams, Nickolas Grace and
Nicholas Woodeson as Abrahams’ trainer (“Coach!”) Sam Mussabini. My
sole reservation is that,
au fond,
this is not the celebration of the diversity of Britishness that it
pretends to be, but rather of a particular concept of Englishness. Even
the very Scottish Liddell’s stance of principle is somehow assimilated
by, and in stage time exceeded by, the Gilbert & Sullivan-threaded
scenes at Cambridge; Abrahams may have been keenly conscious of his
Jewishness, but he immediately integrated into this culture. The
closing musical number is the hymn from which the title comes,
“Jerusalem”, which is quite specific that the green and pleasant land
in point is England’s alone. Actually, that’s not quite true: the very
final number is Vangelis’ iconic “BOMMM-tsht-tsht-tsht-tsht” theme; it
could be no other.
Written for the Financial
Times.