Chris Eldon Lee reviews Touring Consortium Theatre Company’s ‘A Tale Of Two Cities’, which is at Wolverhampton Grand Theatre until Saturday 22nd October … and around the UK.
This is the very best Dickens stage adaptation I can remember.
Mike Poulton divides the famous opening lines – “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…..” like rifle fire around his cast to get this superb production off to a cracking start – and under James Dacre’s punchy direction, the pace never lets up.
We are straightway plunged into a London courtroom in which the Frenchman Charles Darnay is accused of spying on Chatham Navel Dockyard for the Parisian nobility. Certain to be hung drawn and quartered, he is unexpectedly acquitted when an English defence lawyer, Sidney Carton, points out how alike they look and asks the prosecuting witnesses if they are sure of his identity. Darney is naturally grateful – but it’s an unpayable debt; and when both men fall for the same woman, a tragedy is set in train.
The production has a terrific look of faded grandeur – like an oil painting left too long in the light. The picture is framed by towering Georgian ballroom walls. Shards of diagonal light pierce the gloom … and much use of made of naked flame to cast threatening shadows. Rachel Portman’s frantic music is full of furious cellos and endless decays which not only drives the action but seamlessly stitches the scenes together. The perfectly-paced production is like a tumbling mountain stream that pauses in swirl-pool and breaks out into rapids at all the crucial moments.
Onto this vibrant canvas are painted some memorable portraits. The problem character in the story is the pointlessly pious Carton…a former Shrewsbury School Boy (we learn) with a fatally flawed self-image.
He’s a desolate drunkard who is still functioning at a high level of law despite despising himself. And yet he is the most sensitive, caring man in the story…with a moral compass to match.
Somehow actor Joseph Timms makes complete sense of his character’s contradictions … with just enough stumble in his swagger, and just enough self-respect in his psyche, to maintain our belief.
By contrast Jacob Ifan’s Charles Darnay is a Principle Boy paragon; a perfectly behaved and constantly obedient servant. It’s easy to see why dutiful Lucie (delicately played by Shanaya Rafatt) chooses him; but life would have been much more exciting with the alternative.
The most chilling performance however comes from Christopher Hunter as the nasty noble; the monstrous Marquis St. Evremonde. In just two powerfully revealing scenes, writers and the actor lay bare the aristocratic arrogance, the uncompromising hatred and the blind ignorance that fuelled the French Revolution. There is a fearful soliloquy about how repression is essential to ensure privilege. The mob must be whipped and crushed. The Marquis unwittingly picks himself out as guillotine fodder…if only he can live that long. In this one character, Dickens epitomises the evils of Class, still suffered today. Later, he carefully depicts the hard-core, tyrannical, revolutionaries with equal abhorrence. Yet in the unrelenting ugliness, he ensures love and honour are undimmed.
It is a memorable night in the theatre. The play swoops stylishly onto the stage and simply bowls its breathless audience along. It is clear, concise and utterly compelling. And it’s touring; so there is no excuse for missing it.
Photo :Robert Day
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