The Guardian (24/Jan/2001) - Review: Marnie (stage play)
(c) The Guardian (24/Jan/2001)
- http://arts.guardian.co.uk/reviews/story/0,,699345,00.html
- keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Marnie (1964), Winston Graham
Marnie
Sean O'Connor's stage adaptation of the Winston Graham novel about Marnie is a case of style over substance.
In his 1964 film, Alfred Hitchcock had located the story of the compulsive liar and thief in Philadelphia, but O'Connor restores the British post-war backdrop with some success. Marnie's tragedy is played out not merely as psychodrama but as a gritty parable of repressiveness in which sex, class, money and even vowel sounds are major motivators.
Set in what looks like a vast tiled public lavatory, which echoes Marnie's obsessive urge to wash herself clean after every "job", the production seamlessly melds past and present, linking the damaged psyche of the apparently cold- hearted, frigid Marnie with her 10-year-old self, appearing down the train tracks of the past. From the endlessly ticking clock to the shadows thrown up against the back wall and the pre-Coalite smog that invades the stage, this is all exquisitely done, simultaneously conjuring the dream world of psychoanalysis and the harsh reality of a strictly stratified society where hypocrisy and privilege flourish.
But for all his stylistic flourishes, O'Connor - like Hitchcock before him - never really gets inside either Marnie's frozen heart or her strange, forced marriage to Mark Rutland, the boss from whom she steals and who then traps her like a wounded animal.
Just as most of the attempts to explain Marnie's behaviour look ludicrously simplistic to a modern audience - the workings of the subconscious are infinitely more understood than they were 40 years ago - so the failure to explore Rutland's equally bizarre behaviour and motives in marrying Marnie create a hollow centre. The absence makes this otherwise watchable evening seem cynical, sometimes even repulsive.
Try as they may, the actors can't always fill the emotional gap. Sophie Shaw as Marnie initially substitutes woodenness for emotional reticence and damage, but gets better as the evening progresses; in the final scene, the vision of a lonely future, cut off from all humanity, is truly pitiful. But by then it is a close run thing as to whether you will have lost all interest.
