Domestic conflict

The Winter’s Tale
Old Vic

Phèdre
Lyttelton

Racine’s Phèdre is a re-write of Euripides’ Hippolytus, and the spirit of 17th-century France lours over this play despite Nicholas Hytner’s modernising touches. Gravity, formality and high-minded bombast predominate. Racine’s stagecraft is tortuously hard work for today’s audience. His idea of repartee is a two-minute speech followed by a three-minute speech followed by a four-minute simile. The play has been cast as if it were Oedipus. Phèdre is the second wife of King Theseus and together they have a son of stink-bomb and whoopee-cushion age. So how old is she? Mid-20s, perhaps. Thirty at most, given that she’s also seized by an uncontrollable crush on Theseus’ grown-up son, Hippolytus. Casting Helen Mirren as this sexual tornado means that the theme of thwarted eroticism comes over in a rather warped key.

There are visual oddities, too. Ancient Greek warriors wear green army fatigues with the trouser-hems tucked into their jackboots like the Serb militia. And Theseus’ palace is a Mediterranean timeshare, painted a brilliant shade of amber and overlooking a perfect Shirley Valentine sky. (Blue and gold again? Hey, it works. Don’t knock it.) Mirren is more than equal to the great slabs of rhetoric and emotion Racine throws at her but this role and this performance are hard to enjoy. We’re used to seeing Mirren’s face in cinematic proximity and hearing her soft, suggestive voice close up. That said, Racine certainly delivers on pity and fear. I feared I’d be bored and I was, piteously. But at the end many in the audience rose and roared.