Phedre: National Theatre

WHEN Helen Mirren was last on the stage of the National Theatre, she had yet to wow the world with her Oscar-winning turn in The Queen.

Helen Mirren is hugely intelligent as Phedre Helen Mirren is hugely intelligent as Phedre

Now, with that statuette safely on her mantelpiece, she is back depicting the rather more turbulent home life of another queen.

The play is the intense, bleak tragedy of inappropriate passion by the French neo-classical dramatist Racine.

Phèdre herself is the wife of the king of Athens, guiltily in love with her stepson Hippolytus, played here by another big-screen sex symbol, Dominic Cooper.

The queen declares her passion while King Theseus is presumed lost at sea, to the horror of the young prince, who is in turn illictly in love with Aricia (almond-eyed beauty Ruth Negga).

When the king returns unharmed, Phèdre’s poisonous servant Oenone misguidedly intervenes to make everything end as messily as possible.

Big screen sex symbol Dominic Cooper centre takes on Hippolytus Big-screen sex symbol Dominic Cooper (centre) takes on Hippolytus

The title role is a magnificent one for a mature actress, like a French equivalent of Shakespeare’s Cleopatra. If Mirren doesn’t dominate the evening, that’s only because Nicholas Hytner’s modern-dress production – two riveting hours with no interval – is impeccably cast across the board.

Cooper first appears in designer Bob Crowley’s sun-drenched, polished-concrete palace in bare feet and rolled-up jeans, as if he has stepped off the beach in Mamma Mia.

A study in controlled, proud decency, he perfectly grasps the Ancient Greek ethos of duty even in the face of death. It helps that he has the kind of smouldering looks any stepmother might fall for.

Stanley Townsend is a bruising hulk of a king who really might call on the gods to kill his own son, only later howling with remorse.

And Margaret Tyzack, the elderly actress honoured with an Olivier Award last year, is a wonderful and even comic Oenone. Devious and ferocious, she is the nanny who doesn’t know best. 

Alongside such colleagues, Mirren does not attempt to hog the limelight. But it’s a hugely intelligent performance, catching every throe of Phèdre’s internal battle between passion and decency.

Whether rolling herself into a ball of shame, smearing her face over the reluctant Hippolytus’s bare neck, or gut-wrenched with jealousy when she discovers he loves another woman, she creates hauntingly memorable moments.

With all the main physical business banished off stage, Racine can be hard going for the uninitiated. It’s often either statuesque or histrionic, and often the verse doesn’t translate well.

But with a plain-voiced version by the late poet laureate Ted Hughes, Hytner’s production is a rare, brilliant treat, showing that you can do the French national playwright in English.

VERDICT 4/5

National Theatre 020 7452 3000, until August 27

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