Dramatising artists’ attempt to live an idyllic life is not new (Peter Whelan’s The Earthly Paradise about William Morris and Rossetti comes to mind) but Rosenthal elegantly avoids most of the pitfalls of biographical plays.
Though Lawrence was writing Women in Love at the time, the book is, thankfully, hardly referred to. Instead, the focus is on the dynamics of friendship — particularly between conflicting personalities embodied by Ed Stoppard’s passionate and bullying Lawrence and Nick Caldecott’s painfully reserved and self-conscious Murry.
“I’ve been self-conscious since the moment I was conscious,” is a line typical of Rosenthal’s wit.
There is good work too from Charlotte Emmerson, whose Mansfield is frustrated by writer’s block and the sexually distant Murry; and Tracy-Ann Oberman manages to transmit Frieda’s preoccupation with less literary subjects such as sex and eating cake, but without sacrificing her character’s intelligence.
Yet all this takes place on a stage so sterile it sucks the life out of the play. Paul Higgins’ design is the latest Hampstead production to deploy kitsch in pursuit of naturalism.
The cosy interiors; the polystyrene rocks; the patch of lawn — Clare Lizzimore’s production could not be more far removed from the wilds of Cornwall. Rosenthal’s script deserves better. (Tel: 020 7722 9301)
