March 15, 2006: Hampton, Embers
Duke of York’s Theatre. Directed by Michael Blackmore. Based on the novel by Sándor Márai. Opened at this theatre February 15, 2006
A showpiece for Jeremy Irons, long absent from the West End, from a novel by the long-time expatriate Hungarian Márai, who killed himself in San Diego in 1989. It was only after this that his 1942 novel rose to fame in multiple translations. This is a fairly slight piece, not much more than an extended monologue by Irons’s character, Henrik, delivered to his old friend and betrayer Konrad (Patrick Malahide); one other character, Henrik’s ancient wetnurse, Nini, who lives with him in the Hungarian Castle where he was born, appears briefly at the beginning of the end.
I asked the two middle-aged English ladies who sat, enthralled, next to me in the first row of the balcony whether Jeremy Irons was the hunk he used to be. “It’s his voice,” they said, “His voice.” Pheromones aside, I found the voice riveting but not especially articulate. Velvet tones and nice, clear consonants don’t often sit happily together. (But, then, I’m dealing with a certain amount of hearing loss; it may just be me.)
In any case, Konrad has arrived at the castle en route to living out the rest of his life in London. Just why he has agreed to come here to be mercilessly grilled and lectured at by the Irons character is not an immediately accessible fact, though of course it is the necessary dramaturgical precedent for the play itself. We find out that Henrik and Konrad were boyhood friends who became life-long friends — up to the point at which Konrad abruptly, and as it seemed mysteriously, vanished, ran away. Henrik, who is extremely intuitive, intuited after the fact that Konrad had a long-term adulterous affair with Henrik’s own wife, Kristine, and that Konrad, one morning as they hunted, had pointed his gun at Henrik’s head — and then slowly and carefully lowered it without firing. When Henrik went to Konrad’s rooms on the day after Konrad had fled, Kristina appeared there, and when it became apparent that Konrad was gone, Kristina exclaimed, “Coward!” At once, the whole thing became clear to Henrik, who immediately retreated from the castle to a lonely hunting lodge, where he stayed out of communication with Kristina for eight years, until she died of a rare blood disease; she called for Henrik, in vain (he did not hear the call!) on her deathbed.
And so both Henrik and Konrad turn out to be cowards, Henrik concludes — the both of them together worth less than the most beautiful, wonderful woman in the world. Yeah.
Quite amazing, that Hampton, who has written some interesting plays — I saw The Talking Cure at the Cottesloe in 2002, about Jung’s cure of a deeply distressed and conflicted woman, and has adapted some interesting novels, Les Liaisons Dangereuses prominent among them — has been able to craft this long monologue, punctuated occasionally by monosyllabic grunts from Konrad, in such a way as to hold a