The Red Barn

by David Hare

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 20 December 2016

This play is based on a novel called La Main by Georges Simenon. Set in the eastern US, it concerns Donald Dodd (Mark Strong) and his wife Ingrid (Hope Davis), and their encounter with his friend Ray Sanders (Nigel Whitmey) and his wife Mona (Elizabeth Debicki). It is directed by Robert Icke and designed by Bunny Christie, with lighting by Paule Constable.

The play opens with a snowstorm in which the four characters are attempting to reach the Dodds' home after a party, their car having broken down. By the time three of them are safely inside, Ray has been lost in the storm; later his body is found even though Donald went out again to look for him. It transpires that he may not have spent long looking, though he was gone for hours, as Ingrid discovers many cigarette butts in the barn, which Donald burns - he had sat there for some hours.

There is something chillingly detached about the relationship between Donald and Ingrid - she seems both controlling and remote, potentially a threat but apparently satisfied with the choices she has made. Donald is in a funk and willingly begins an affair with Mona while ostensible seeing to the winding up of Ray's estate. It comes as a total shock to him when Mona eventually announces that she is planning to re-marry; she hopes they may remain 'friends' but nothing more.

Part of the reason for Donald's distress is a feeling of lost opportunities, classically played out in the masculine manner by having an affair. But the crisis was really triggered by seeing Ray at the fateful party having sex with the hostess (an event that Mona later claims to have been aware of).

The performances were all very good - Mark Strong convincing as a man buckling under pressure, Hope Davis unnervingly calm, Elizabeth Debicki mysterious, passionate and ultimately unavailable, but exuding an air of sophisticated New York style in contrast to the small-town atmosphere suffocating the Dodds' home. However, the character of Donald Dodd is nowhere near as interesting as that of Eddie Carbone in Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge, in which Mark Strong really excelled (see the review from 27 March 2015).

But there is something glacial about the play, despite the fine acting and the wildness of the opening storm. The physical stage effects are noisy with wind and cleverly contrived with varying and very cinematic framing devices, but at times the characters seem to be sleepwalking through their problems. Also, the device of withholding the crucial scene of Ray's infidelity, thus jumbling the chronological order of the narrative, seems rather contrived. David Hare has mentioned (in relation to his play Plenty) that he often begins with an image and writes from there; one wonders in this case whether the image was the battle through the storm - inherently difficult to stage - and that this in turn, since it was needed to open the play, dictated the recourse to flashbacks. It seems an unnecessary complication. Though lavished with a strong cast and all the resources of the Lyttleton's technical facilities, it is not a play which fully merits such attention.