Review - Switzerland

Switzerland

By Joanna Murray-Smith

Directed by Sarah Goodes

Edward – Eamon Farren

Patricia Highsmith – Sarah Peirse

Set and Costume Design – 

Michael Scott-Mitchell

Lighting Design - Nick Schlieper

Composer and Sound Designer – Steve Francis

Set in the best-selling author of The Talented Mr. Ripley - Patricia Highsmith’s home/retreat in Switzerland this two hander opens with Highsmith attending to the not unexpected, nor particularly welcome, intrusion of a young visitor from her publisher’s office in New York.  To begin with she is an 

unyielding host to a vulnerable guest but tables turn and turn again.

Both actors are remarkable.  Sarah Peirse as Patricia Highsmith is outstanding.  Her contorted physicalisation is credible and telling.  We find ourselves watching a woman twisted and imbalanced by any number of physical and psychological aches.  Eamon Farren as Edward is wonderfully convincing in all aspects of his character’s exposition.

 

Joanna Murray-Smith’s marvelously honed often witty text moves forward with subtlety, tripping the audience up with disturbing ‘red herrings’ and offering insights into the latter years of writer Patricia Highsmith’s thorny acerbic, tortured nature.  It highlights and discusses some of the hurdles Highsmith experienced as a writer.   Through its exploration of the immersive nature of the labor of writing it also seems to offers insights into Murray-Smith’s personal experience with bewitching transparency.

Throughout there is a lurking sense of the inevitability of something very unpleasant pending.  In this way Switzerland’s atmosphere is reminiscent of the atmosphere permeated by the repugnant sense of the inescapability of the exploits of vindictive opportunist Tom Ripley, as portrayed by Matt Damon, in the 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley.

In this psychological thriller there are no intervals just two opportunities for the audience to release a bit of tension as darkness descends on the set and the actors leave the stage for a few minutes.   Thankfully the pressure of this clever, complex acutely engrossing thriller is not released before the somewhat ambiguous and lyrical conclusion that is encompassing like a serpent grasping its own tail.

The low ceilinged set by Michael Scott-Mitchell at times appears to be spacious and air filled and at others restricting and claustrophobic.  Lighting (Nick Schlieper) is used to maximum effect to create atmosphere and often highlights a portrait of a younger Highsmith that at times appears to be lauding it over the living like a dark shadowy over-blown ghost of fame.  And music (Steve Francis) is used sparingly to underscore and enrich flights of creative fancy.

Themes of fame, murder, deception, bigotry, agency and control, amongst others, are explored to satisfying cathartic effect.

Not to be missed.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)