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New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
Restaurants
Kitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave
Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
Nicholas de Jongh's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Marianne Elliott.
Cast: Naomi Frederick, Claire Skinner, Angus Wright
Description: Marianne Elliott directs Samuel Adamson's adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Little Eyolf, set in 1950s England.
Trains: Tube/BR: Waterloo 
Phone: 0207452 3000
Website: www.nationaltheatre.org.uk
Powerful acting: Claire Skinner and Angus Wright as Rita and Alfred Affleck
Mrs Affleck reminds us how risky it is to attempt the wholesale rewriting and updating of a classic text. It is an outstanding example of the vanity of the interfering playwright who imagines he can cast fresh light upon a classic original by reconstituting it. The talented Samuel Adamson has seized Little Eyolf, Ibsen’s late, great drama of sexual guilt and desire, and ravished it. He has taken liberties with its principal characters and their predicaments, transporting them from the late 19th century Norwegian seaside to the Kent Coast in 1955, a clunking allusion to the fact that in both periods women were fettered and commodified.
Adamson spatters his text with the distraction of 1950s key words, from Churchill and Princess Margaret to Journey into Space and Hopalong Cassidy. Ironically, the fruit of his labours is a play less modern, psychologically shocking or challenging than Ibsen’s original. What’s more, Marianne Elliott’s fine, erotically charged production on a traverse stage that encompasses both esplanade and spacious kitchen, suggests she would have rendered a fascinating version of the original.
Adamson calls his play “from Henrik Ibsen’s Little Eyolf”, implying he used the original as a springboard. How little is interestingly sprung though. William Archer’s original 1890s translation sends down thunderbolts: failed writer Alfred Almers nurses a passion for his equally smitten half-sister, Asta,whose imaginary presence enhanced love-making with his wife. Worse, Almer’s infant son, Eyolf, was irreparably injured as an infant when left unattended while his parents had sex.
In Adamson’s version, after Eyolf drowns in the sea, coaxed not by Ibsen’s sinister Rat Wife but by Adamson’s leather-jacketed teddy-boy in an Elvis quiff, the marriage of Rita and Alfred Affleck is rent asunder. Adamson, however, does not develop Ibsen’s veiled erotic scenario or emphasise what differences there were between Norwegian codes of regimentation for women in the 1890s and English ones in the 1950s. At least there is a driving energy about the acting.
Claire Skinner’s shrill, taut Rita, brims with sexual frustration and jealousy while busying herself in her smart, Formica-topped kitchen. Her sister-in-law (Naomi Frederick’s impressively intense school teacher) sits by the sea with Angus Wright’s superb Alfred after Eyolf’s death. They gaze at each other, both grief-struck and mutually enthralled. If only they had been in Ibsen not Adamson.
Booking to 29 April (020 7452 3000).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
