Fanny & Alexander
Adapted by Stephen Beresford, from the film by Ingmar Bergman Director: Max Webster
The Old Vic, The Cut, London SE1 (0844-871 7628) Until 14 April Running time: 3hrs 30mins (including intervals)
This “leisurely and expansive” adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s sprawling autobiographical masterpiece is set among a family of actors in the Swedish city of Uppsala, in the early 20th century. “Actors acting actors, theatre about theatre – for three-and-a-half hours, including two brief intervals. You have been warned,” said Christopher Hart in The Sunday Times. Those willing to commit, however, are in for a proper treat. What unfolds is a “lovable portrait of a warmhearted and squabbling tribe of extrovert, extravagant misfits”, the Ekdahls, and a memoir of childhood that is by turns “thrilling and moving”. Beautiful to look at and brilliantly acted by a crack cast – led by Penelope Wilton on “majestic form” as the thespian materfamilias – this is a “richly colourful and assured recreation, and a brave, unquestionable triumph for the Old Vic”.
In my view this is a fine achievement, without quite making a convincing case for the transition from screen to stage, said Sam Marlowe in The Stage. This show doesn’t achieve the “rich strangeness of the original”, nor is it sufficiently adventurous in creating a dramatic language to take the place of Bergman’s cinematic vision. What you get in the film, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph, is an “intense quality of lingering observation”, particularly of the younger characters, that “lends the entire enterprise a quality of mystery and childlike wonder. To compare the beauty of the original with the visuals here is like comparing a rainbow with an iridescent soap bubble.”
The best section, in this threeact show, is the middle one, where Fanny and Alexander’s widowed mother marries the puritanical bishop, Edvard Vergérus, and the mood turns wintry, said Michael Billington in The Guardian. Kevin Doyle is excellent as the bishop. Lolita Chakrabarti as his “venomous” sister, Jonathan Slinger as a lecherous restaurateur and Michael Pennington as an aged antiques dealer are also superb. This is certainly a long show, said Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail, but it’s so life-affirming and staged with such “panache”, it’s well worth it.