A month in the country (Donmar Warehouse, London)
Verdict: Half-throttle rom-com
Rating: Three stars
Sophie Okonedo is back where she belongs: center stage. The only problem is that as an actor, Okonedo is like a Ducati motorcycle: built to eat the open road. There’s no point in keeping her in a garage just to rev her engine.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happens in A Month In The Country, a comically claustrophobic piece that slows down its theatrical coupling.
Written by the great Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev in the 1850s, and then updated by the great Irish playwright Brian Friel in 1992, this is the story of the control freak wife of a wealthy Russian landowner who amuses herself by weaving a labyrinthine love life.
Stuck in a forbidding backwater, Natalya (Okonedo) falls madly in love with her young son’s teacher, Aleksey (Patrick Gibson), while stringing along her husband’s best friend, Michel (Alistair Petrie).
Meanwhile, her adopted teenage daughter Vera (Rachelle Diedericks) threatens to unravel her plans – by falling in love with the tutor herself.
The play balances between tragedy, comedy and outright farce and needs Okonedo as a guiding personality.
Sophie Okonedo is back where she belongs: at the center of A Month In The Country, a comically claustrophobic piece that slows down her theatrical couple
Instead, she seems strangely distant and downplays her character’s sexual charisma. And we know she’s got that charisma in her tool bag – we saw it in her lusty pairing with Ralph Fiennes in the National Theatre’s steamy Antony And Cleopatra in 2018.
Yes, she wears a beautiful collection of pink silk dresses. And yes, she radiates sexual frustration. But we never see her commanding the stage.
Instead, it’s the borderline chaos of Lyndsey Turner’s production that provides the most enjoyment here.
The muscular young Irish actor Gibson is one to watch, in every respect: he seems genuinely shocked by the ladies’ interest in him.
And Daniel Rigby has a lot of fun as a country doctor, fond of uttering Christmas crackers.
The show also looks good on a rectangular lawn, with a nice entrance to a house beyond.
There is an attempt at symbolism in a glass cage that descends to conceal set changes between scenes; it suggests that the play’s pursuit of love is both a fruitful pleasure and a seductive death trap.
Unfortunately, Turner’s production oscillates precariously between both scenarios, uncontrolled by the controlling hand of a leading woman.
A small and silent light (Minerva, Chichester)
Verdict: too small and too quiet
Rating: Two stars
Among the many incredibly brave soldiers recruited to work behind enemy lines in World War II was Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan – codename Madeleine – who acted as a radio operator alongside the French Resistance. Life expectancy in the role was six weeks.
Yet A Small And Quiet Light, Stephanie Street’s warm, theatrical tribute to Khan, is so keen to be respectful that it leaves our heroine looking a bit dull.
Khan was born in Moscow in 1914. Her Indian father was a Sufi Muslim musician; her mother an American poet. She wrote children’s stories and was a committed pacifist, determined to thwart the Nazis.
Not only does Street undersell these qualities, she also sidesteps the naivety of Khan’s keeping a log of her work (which leaves invaluable information for the Nazis).
Once caught, Khan is interrogated by a Gestapo officer who is so polite he is almost British. He makes tea and begs: “I want to help you.” Tragically, she was sent to Dachau and executed.
Priyanga Burford is strikingly sincere in Elin Schofield’s production, which makes it clear that Khan has led an exemplary life. But couldn’t that life have been depicted with a little more drama?
A Month In The Country runs until October 3; A small and silent light burns until September 12th.
