Girl With A Pearl Earring at the Haymarket

Sometimes one wonders if there are any original stories left. Tracy Chevalier’s popular novel about Vermeer’s most famous painting has already been filmed (with Colin Firth rather miscast as the artist) and it has now been transplanted to the stage in a new adaptation by David Joss Buckley. The first question one has to ask is why? Is this story so potent it deserves a third telling? Does theatre bring something to it that the other mediums were unable to match? The answer is no on both counts.

As with Chevalier’s novel, this is a fictionalised account of Delft’s master painter and what happens when he invites a young servant girl into his house. Griet is a pretty thing, seventeen years old and still more child than woman. Her father has been blinded in accident so she needs to take a job to help support her family. But from the start Vermeer’s wife Catharina views her with suspicion; unsurprisingly perhaps, as Griet’s beauty and lack of worldliness seems to transfix every man she meets. Not only does the butcher boy want to marry her but Vermeer’s lecherous patron, Van Ruijven, (played as a lank haired panto villain by Niall Buggy) clearly wants to get into her petticoats. And while Vermeer’s attraction to the girl is less overt, it is no less damaging.

Though Vermeer appears to love his ever-pregnant wife, he is drawn to the girl and allows her to assist him in his studio and eventually – inevitably – to sit for him. Which she does; having donned that striking turban first, she poses, as instructed, with her lips ever so slightly parted, her eyes bearing all. In this way the act of painting her becomes a far more intimate act than if he had simply given her a swift one in the kitchen, something that both Griet and the increasingly jealous Catharina understand even if he does not.

It’s conjecture, of course: the girl’s identity and Vermeer’s relationship to her are unknown. The book at least, written from Griet’s perspective, had an inbuilt distance, but here the story is presented in a lumpy, literal fashion. Every now and then a character will step over to the corner of the stage and make some solemn pronouncement about the way the narrative is going, just in case anyone wasn’t paying attention.

These little interludes are so clumsy it’s hard not to snigger. Not only that but they also speak of a lack of trust, the play does not appear to think its audience will be able to guess what is going on in the character’s heads without spelling it out in so blunt a fashion. (“She was different from the other maids…”) Later in the evening, having had the concept of allegory explained to her by Vermeer, Griet sobs and winces as he symbolically sticks her newly-pierced lobe with his wife’s earring. Conceits that may have worked well on the page, feel laboured and heavy-handed on the stage.

Kimberley Nixon is suitably plump-lipped and pretty under her plain cotton cap as Griet: young, yes, but not a total innocent. She over-enunciates at first, and seems to be speaking too loudly, moving too stiffly, but she gradually warms up in the scenes with Vermeer. Adrian Dunbar does a decent enough job as the artist, but he often comes off as a bit dim for not being able to see the consequences of his actions. There is no sign of the passionate artist figure, in love with the creative process and blind to all else. That may be a cliché but at least it would be a bit more interesting that what we get. There is, however, sturdy support from Sara Kestelman as Vermeer’s wily mother-in-law and Maggie Service as the other, plainer kitchen maid, Tanneke. And the production does look very pretty, the set design recreating Vermeer’s studio with its distinctive windows.

Joe Dowling’s direction is competent at best: it gets the job done, but never sticks its neck out. It seems a particularly odd choice that the paintings are never shown. The work – the art – gets lost as a result, and the idea of master and muse is never really explored in any fresh or insightful way. Without the art, it’s just another case of a middle aged man getting itchy around a pretty young girl.

Words once more borrowed from musicOMH as I have again been bee-like in my busyness this week.

A Technical Hitch at the Haymarket

I looked at my watch. 7.45pm. The show was supposed to have started fifteen minutes ago, yet the safety curtain was showing no signs of rising. Hmph. The last couple of days had been really draining and un-fun and I found myself making involuntary grumpy noises. Just as I was starting to ponder exactly when I had turned into my mother, a nervous-looking, black-clad behind-the-scenes person was shoved on stage. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We’re having a few problems with the sound.” The rest of the audience began to make grumpy noises of their own. She disappeared for a few minutes, before returning, looking even more apprehensive. “I’m afraid we’ve not been able to fix it. But we’re going to go ahead with the show anyway.” As the house lights finally fell, the grumpy noises reached a crescendo…

OK, let’s backtrack a bit.

Theatre: Haymarket. The one with the interior that looks like Dubai’s Burj Al Arab hotel just mated with Versailles. My Great Aunt would adore it; she’s never gone in a room she didn’t think could be improved by a bit of gold leaf and some cherubim.

Play: Jonathan Kent’s new production of William Wycherley’s Restoration comedy The Country Wife, last encountered, by me at least, on an A Level theatre outing, some ten (ten!) years ago.

A swaggering Toby Stephens plays the main character Horner. A known cad, the play opens with him conspiring with his doctor to put around a rumour that he is now impotent having picked up something nasty in the trouser-department while overseas (people keep saying "Oh, he's been in France" as way of explanation and then shaking their head sadly as if that explained everything). Horner has realized that his new found eunuch status will allow him to spend time with other men's wives un-chaperoned, something he intends to take full advantage of. His scheme is rather undermined however when the innocent young wife of his insanely jealous and over-protective friend Pinchwife develops a huge crush on him.

The production looks fantastic, on aesthetic terms alone it’s a winner; I loved Paul Brown's perspective-skewing sets, in bright blues and brighter pinks, doors receding into the distance. The outfits are rather wonderful too, blending historical and contemporary elements to striking effect – the men, for example, wear stunning silk frock coats over super tight jeans and billowing shirts.

Unfortunately the rest of the production struck me as rather muddled, a lot of thought and attention has gone into the surface elements but the dark heart of this tale of the corrupting tug of the city has been overlooked, glossed over in every sense. The farcical elements of the plot have been played up to the point of pantomime. It's all smutty asides, suggestive grape consumption and phallic vases. When it should have an edge, when it should get nasty, like when Pinchwife locks up his young wife and threatens to put out her eyes and carve the word ‘whore’ in her face with a pen-knife, well, it fails to have any impact. The audience greet these moments with the same level of laughter as when Horner jests of one of his conquests, revealing a secret door to his bedroom, that “I’m going in round the back” (this witty play on words is repeated a further couple of times for good measure; well, you wouldn’t want a joke of that quality to just get one airing, would you?)

The lack of shock-factor was partly down to the casting of David Haig as Pinchwife. He’s a great actor and can do panic and exasperation with ease, but is less good at conveying menace. However the real fault is with the decision to push forward the bawdy comedy at the expense of the play’s complexities. I also had problems with Fiona Glascott’s performance as Haig’s young wife. I found her, with her foot stamping tantrums, simply too childish and conversely not nearly innocent enough for the role, a bit too breathy and calculating for my liking. Still the production kept me entertained, kept me laughing, and for all the fuss they made at the start, the missing music in the first half was barely noticeable (they fixed it in time for the second act).

It did, however, take me an absolute age to realize that the music the cast take their bows too was a period-appropriate reworking of Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Want To Have Fun.

There was also a cameo by a Real Live Bunny in a hutch, though this clearly doesn’t top The Rose Tattoo’s scene-stealing goat moment in regards to pointless use of animals onstage.