by From a perspective, Patricia Highsmith’s novel from 1955, The Talented Mr Ripley, was considered the victim of his own success over a impoverished little fraudster. Loved by readers and authors and adapted several times for screen and stage – including the Starry 1999 film with Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow and the Netflix series 2024 with Andrew Scott – has become a legend. With the legend, embellishment, exaggeration, simplification – until even fans of the book, which it reads again today, may be surprised that Highsmith’s antihero is not the charismatic narcissist and trust man of popular imagination, but actually a more complex, chaotic, sad person. The Italian Riviera backdrop of the 1950s is just as shabby as sparkling.
The new production of the Sydney Theater Company is somewhere between Highsmith’s original and the legend, and the playwright Joanna Murray-Smith and the director Sarah Goodes in conversation with both and does not commit to any. Instead, they ruthlessly do what they need to produce an entertaining and Pacy piece of theater for a contemporary audience.
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The bones of the story remain: Tom Ripley (played by Will McDonald von Heart Break High and Home and Away) becomes a life with a low level of a wealthy businessman, Herbert Greenleaf (Andrew McFarlane), who is for a well-paid trip to the Italian Riviera, around his Indolent-Son-thickie (Ra-Labade) (RA-Labade) (RA-Labade) (RA-Labade) (RA-Labade). There gradually moves Tom and ultimately closes-to integrate himself with Dickie and his girlfriend Marge (Claude Scott-Mitchell), while not only his charismatic host, but also his lifestyle of simple luxury and leisure.
It is certainly not a great spoiler to say in this phase in the life of the novel that Tom Dickie murdered and takes over his identity. This exhibits the game of cats and mouse, which is often unbearably excitingly thriller of the sizes of highsmiths than Tom in picturesque European cities – and between identities – the police, but also Dickies friends and family.
Murray-Smith’s adaptation is framed by the story of an older and more demanding Tom Ripley, who in the opening scene on an imposing, minimalist, under noirish Lighting, is told that this is the story of a game that is played against the opportunities. The piece then unfolds as through its imagination, the empty set populated with the facility and props and illuminates with around headlights -all with artificiality that indicates that we could see a 50s -studio film that is turned.
Murray-Smith and Goodes previously worked on STCs of excellent psychological drama about Highsmith, Switzerland. The line-up is young to Highsmith’s novel, in which the key figures in their mid-20s are beautiful and beautifully dressed; The design is wipid and dramatic; The soundtrack gives a more conventional period drama a contemporary whirlwind, in which a memorable dance breaks can add an electro club banger and the nerves of the violent femmes.
When adjusting the 250-page novel for a two-hour staging, Murray-Smith makes confident decisions, expands the role of Dickies Chum Freddie Miles (Faisal Hamza) and the conversion of Highsmith’s Marge, which is largely unlikely than a much better opponent of Tops. (This in turn leads to the courageous choice of the piece that should not be spoiled.)
The homoerotic of the book is expressed on the front test and is explicitly made, with Murray-Smith inventing stories and dialogue so that Tom and others represent exactly what they think and what this story is about. There is Echos from Anthony Minghella’s film from 1999 in her dramatization, including an early scene in which Tom Dickie’s father embodies.
Goodes and their design team are large, form lively set pieces and pictures and bend in comedies and moments of the crowd-to the above-mentioned violent femmes dance break, in which Ripley blows sexually frustrated steam. It mainly works, although there are moments when comedies and physical attacks undermine the carefully built tension of a scene.
Related: Ripley Review – Andrew Scott is absolutely fascinating
So much of every Ripley retrospective declaration rests on the actor in his center, and McDonald, who is twice as a narrator and protagonist, bears an admirable work that is worth this weight. It is the safest in the narcissistic end of Ripley’s spectrum, but also successfully conveys the bitter aspects of the character: his sensitivity and desperation, which are loved, his foundation of self-hatred, its repulsive sogs with a thickie. He convincingly turns from boring, unforgettable cipher to the charismatic leading man, while he does not have the talent for identity that an actor like Matt Damon or Andrew Scott has it.
Every aspect of this production feels very capable – like Ripley from Highsmith itself -; do what it has to be if it has to be survived and being successful. It does not reveal any new aspects of the character or novel, but rather contributes to a conversation and legend around them and probably probably does not convert not stored audience into admirers of this clever antiheroes. Ripley could be thrilled.
