A play like this, with actors like this, should have teeth. It should have grit, terror, and veer into the surreal. This production, unfortunately, had the tools to achieve these things, but fell short — rather than playing into the surreal nightmare, it played it as straight as you can imagine. The result is that while Jared Harris was fascinating to watch, he wasn’t nearly as frightening as he ought to be.
I attended with my husband, who (knowing nothing of the play) left asking why tell this story? That’s the key question this production didn’t answer. Without acknowledgement of the nightmare, the play veers into misogyny, and was only redeemed by the magnetic performance of Lisa Diveney who takes control of the situation and is somehow empowered in a twisted way.
On the whole, it is unfortunate to have such an exceptional cast with such an exceptional script come off as so wildly boring.