Review of The Forsyte Saga Parts 1 and 2 – Entitlement in Marriage and Betrayal Reveals the Feuding Family | stage

toLong before Downton Abbey’s upstairs/downstairs drama, there were the shenanigans of John Galsworthy, the ruling nouveau riche Forsyte family. Their love and disagreements are spread across nine books and set against more than four decades of British history.

Unlike Downton, the story only has an upstairs plot. They have come a long way from their Dorset agrarian descendants, and are not the best kind of people: primarily money with a need to ‘have things’. Adapted by Sean McKenna and Len Coughlan, who previously adapted the story for radio, we see how this entitlement manifests itself in love, marriage and betrayal.

There is plenty of human drama and the focus is on the female experience in both parts, the first concerning Irene (Fiona Hampton) and her marital rape at the hands of her landlord husband, Soames (Joseph Melson) in the Victorian era. The second is the story of Flora (Flora Spencer Longhurst), Soames’s daughter and sometime narrator, set after the Great War. It’s less reliant on familiar melodrama and more lively for it, showcasing a star-crossed romance between Fleur and Irene’s son, John (Andy Rush), who fall on opposite sides of the family divide. We see Flor as being strong-headed about love as an entitlement (like father, like daughter?). “You are mine,” she repeats, privately. John is a more passive and pale character compared to Irene’s lover, Philip Pausini (also played by Rush).

The first part is a kind of War and Peace lite, showing how a family’s fortunes are shaped or shaped by the time in which they live, although the major historical twists seem distant, with the Boers in South Africa and Queen Victoria’s funeral being brief, but not mixed in with the human drama. The 1920s post-war generation talks about life as a comedy and carries a doctrinaire nihilism into Part II, but this is repeatedly stated rather than felt.

Somis, the villain of the first part, becomes the weak father who must stand by and watch his daughter repeat his mistakes. Irene, who looks beautiful objectR For the younger Somis, who owns it along with his art collection, it embodies the existing pain and stifling choices of a woman living in an era that leaves her powerless as a wife, no matter how special she may seem from the outside. In some ways she is a British Anna Karenina, even though she proves herself a survivor.

This production’s premiere took place in the intimate, fringe space of the Park Theater in London, where it was ingeniously staged with an expertly spare set, consisting of little more than layers of velvet curtains. The audience had to imagine all this family’s wealth. It’s the same as the Royal Shakespeare Company show but has a different effect. It feels less experimental and more like a Merchant Ivory-style costume drama that does the job of drawing you in.

However, it was achieved smartly and quickly by director Josh Roche. The simple design of the set is eye-catching in its red velvet luxury. The outstanding sound is composed and designed by Max Pappenheim, and is clear and lively (woodpigeons cooing, horses chipping, etc.).

There is a fluidity in the switching of scenes that adds a psychological tone: characters from the last scene stand watching the next, as if eavesdropping, or looming like ghosts in the mind. Many shows involve skilled juggling between the characters. But this imaginative form of storytelling is boxed in by a familiar story about a wealthy race that is often greedy and brutal. It’s basically a swanky soap opera that slides easily over the course of five hours (if you see them both) but never quite penetrates the character or story.