The BBC transmitted a 26-part adaptation of Galsworthy’s saga in 1968. Such was its grip on the nation that Sunday evening church services were moved back an hour to allow the faithful to be stationed at their goggleboxes in time for the latest episode.
This new stage adaptation by Shaun McKenna and Lin Coghlan comes in two parts, entitled respectively Irene and Fleur. Irene is set in the Victorian era, Fleur in the Edwardian era up to 1926. Characters are common to both and their story is held together by the narrator Fleur (Flora Spencer-Longhurst), daughter of wealthy solicitor Soames Forsyte (Joseph Millson), who introduces her extended family before taking centre stage in Part 2.
Played on a bare stage decorated only by a red carpet, a red velvet curtain and a handful of chairs, it relies on the calibre of the performances and the judicious deployment of lighting and music to make it work.
Central to the story is the unhappy marriage of uptight Soames and the glamorous but caged Irene (Fiona Hampton). When their relationship disintegrates it opens an unhealable wound that bleeds down the decades, infecting everyone it touches.
Sides are taken, secrets are withheld, middle class respectability threatened with scandal as the toxic DNA of the Forsytes is passed on from one generation to the next. Soames is unchanging throughout, as uncomprehending of his own need to treat everything – his wife included – as property like his precious Goya, star of his art collection.
In Part 2 he is an anachronism, a throwback to the Victorian age as the Twenties come roaring over the horizon, appearing in funereal black like an undertaker at a children’s party. When Fleur snarls at her father “I’m nothing like you!” it is abundantly clear that the manipulative, narcissistic minx is exactly like him, only in a frock.
The admirable adaptation maintains the complexity of the characters – Soames is no simple hiss/boo villain but a man so blind to his own failings that he elicits almost as much sympathy as hate.
The stage dynamics are subtly managed by director Josh Roche, whose discretion allows body language and glances to convey almost as much as the filetted dialogue. Dramatic storytelling of the highest order.
The Forsyte Saga will be at the Park Theatre until December 7
Tickets: 020 7870 6876
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