The Forsyte Saga Part 1: Irene

John Galsworthy, adapted by Shaun McKenna and Lin Coghlan
Ashley Cook for Troupe in association with Park Theatre
Park Theatre

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Andy Rush as Philip Bosinney and Fiona Hampton as Irene Forsyte Credit: Mitzi de Margary
Fiona Hampton as Irene Forsyte, Andy Rush as Philip Bosinney and company Credit: Mitzi de Margary
Fiona Hampton as Irne Forsyte and Joseph Milson as Soames Forsyte Credit: Mitzi de Margary
Flora Spencer-Longhurst as Fleur Forsyte Credit: Mitzi de Margary
Joseph Millson as Soames Forsyte and Fiona Hampton as Irene Forsyte Credit: Mitzi de Margary
Joseph Millson as Soanes Forsyte, Flora Spencer-Longhurstas Fleur Forsyte and Fiona Hampton a Irene Forsytes Credit: Mitzi de Margary

John Galsworthy’s Man of Property, published in 1906, began a sequence of novels that became known as The Forsyte Saga. They chart the story of the nouveau riche Forsyte family over more than four decades from the 1880s onwards. There have been numerous radio and television adaptation: a 26-episode TV version with Eric Porter and Nyree Dawn Porter most notably capturing the public imagination in 1967 when we didn’t have today’s plethora of channel choices.

Shaun McKenna and Lin Coghlan first adapted the books for a multi-part BBC Radio 4 serialisation and return to them here, compacting the saga into two plays, played in repertory with some opportunities to see both in sequence on the same day.

Part 1: Irene concentrates on the story of Soames Forsyte and his first wife Irene but employs as narrator the daughter from his second marriage who is discovering what happened before she was born, all as new to her as it is it the audience. Flora Spencer-Longhurst makes her a lively investigator, unseen by the relations whose past lives she observes while moving among them, a device that makes for smooth storytelling.

When she was 18, Irene married “man of property” Soames to please her father. Her husband was his choice, it wasn’t a love match, and in five years of dutiful marriage, she has not learned to love him. Soames is not a bad man but, only three generations away from when Forsytes were farmers, he values things for their monetary worth. He collects paintings, but rather than hanging on his walls, most go into store, an investment, and, like most of the men in his family with their Victorian values, he sees his wife as his property.

When his niece June gets engaged to an ambitious young architect, Soames commissions him to build him a house in the country. That is how Irene gets to spend time with handsome young Philip Bosinney, and they become lovers. That is just the beginning of the saga.

Joseph Millson presents an upright but inflexible Soames, but he is not without feeling. The unforgivable violence towards Irene, which aims to reclaim her but alienates him from her forever, is prompted by advice from his father. Behaviour that sent a shock through a nation of television viewers is made equally abhorrent, but this Soames isn’t evil.

As Irene, Fiona Hampton has the striking appearance that attracts male attention but at the same time suggests how uncomfortable she feels under the male gaze until in Andy Rush’s handsome Bosinney she meets a man to whom she can respond. Her happiness is shattered when he is killed in a street accident. When she returns to her marital home, Soames’s behaviour makes being with him impossible, but Soames's uncle, loveable Jolyon (Michael Lumsden), takes her under his wing and on his death leaves her money.

Director Josh Roche stages on Anna Yates’s simple set of a rich red carpet in front of red velvet curtains behind which the theatre’s bare wall comes to represent Robin Hill, the country house Bosinney built, and other locations. Chairs, a few light fittings and costumes indicate period. Brief scenes are interwoven and almost cinematically overlapped to give feed facts and carry on the story, making the action fast and the telling flow easily, with a strong cast playing those others we meet of the family.

Part 1 tells what is told in the first two volumes of Galsworthy’s Saga and makes a play that can stand alone that concentrates on the main strand of the story, omitting its complexities to offer a strong piece of theatre. After a leap of nearly two decades, Part 2 will continue the story through the next generation of Forsytes.

Reviewer: Howard Loxton

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