Jude’s a long way from Hardy country
Jude (Hampstead Theatre, London) Verdict: Jude the obscure
iMMiGRATiON, elitism, deep state machinations, Greek tragedy, British farming post-Brexit . . . these are merely some of the themes wedged into Jude, a new play by Howard Brenton, which perhaps ends just before it can offer some thoughts on kitchen sinks.
Brenton wrote this piece after a television adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Jude The Obscure failed to happen. But don’t expect a costume drama, nor (‘God forbid,’ says Brenton in the programme) an update — just an attempt to ‘tell a simple story as truthfully as you can’.
That story: a Portsmouth classics teacher agrees to give A-level tuition to her cleaner, a teenage syrian refugee called Judith — but then quits on her for a new job.
Furious, and spitting lines from Homer in the original Greek, Judith has a child with a criminal Hampshire pig farmer, and then deserts them to batter at Oxford’s doors and have sex with her cousin who is under observation by anti-terrorism officers.
And periodically Euripides enters through the back door in a face-mask and a dark robe to speak either to, or through, Judith, depending on how you see it.
simple? Truthful? How much simplicity and truthfulness can a single play take?
Brenton nods gently to Hardy in the fictional christminster college and, less gently, in the bloody killing of a pig just before the interval.
As for the unlikelihood of the plot, is that also a nod to Hardy, or a problem with the play?
isabella Nefar gives pugnacious life to Judith, who likes to celebrate the moment of orgasm by flinging a vodka bottle across the room. That definitely wasn’t in the novel. Nor were caroline Loncq’s lubricious professor, nor Anna savva’s hardgardening syrian aunt, both of whom seem to have arrived from an Alan Ayckbourn farce clutching an urgent message to lighten the tone. Edward Hall, in his last production after a transformative decade as Hampstead Theatre’s artistic director, directs with as much clarity as he can muster. And Ashley MartinDavis’s bare stage d o e s n’ t exactly promise a snow scene, but makes clever use of trapdoors to give us one. No kitchen sink, though. An oversight.