8 – 12 April
Switzerland often finds itself in the news for the least appetizing of reasons, as the place one might go to die of one’s own free will. Joanna Murray-Smith’s play about American author, Patricia Highsmith, seems at times to be playing on this theme since her central character is holed up in the mountains for what she knows to be the last period of her life. However that is not the fish that Ms Murray-Smith is concerned to fry.
Claudia Wicki plays the sharp-tongued literary prize fighter being tracked down to her eyrie by the callow publishing house employee, Edward Ridgeway (Louie Wanless). He is on a mission to get her to sign a book deal for what he encourages her to believe will secure both her legacy and the literary fame of her most successful fictional character, Tom Ripley. Ms Wicki gives an elegant portrayal of a writer who relishes the darker side of human nature. Her delight in the objects of destruction, her collection of weapons, borders on the erotic.
Ridgeway finds himself to be an unwelcome visitor with a reception akin to walking into a verbal bramble thicket. Undaunted, he plods his way through the relentless prickly knockabout which nevertheless gives the audience a good taste of Highsmith’s misanthropic turn of mind. Those who think that unpalatable traits should attract odium to an artist’s whole oeuvre might be disappointed that her notorious racism and anti-Semitism gets little more than a brief mention as it merely takes its place in the roll of her unfavourable view of humanity as a whole.
The second act manages to find another gear as the turnaround in the characters’ relationships hints at yet another mystery of a more psychological nature. Director, Tara Lacey, follows the writer in keeping us guessing and leaving the mystery an open one for the audience to puzzle over for themselves.
The acting is, on the whole, up to the mark, though there was a tentativeness about some moments which suggested living off the word rather than the word supplying articulation of the thought or emotion. Again the Alma is an intimate theatre yet at times I struggled to hear what might best be described as a TV level of delivery.
Caveats aside, this is a good production to give audiences a look at a play that had some measure of success in the west end and is a welcome fit for the Alma.
★★★☆☆ Graham Wyles, 9 April 2025
Photography credit: Jordan Davies@jgdphotography
