Farm Hall

Theatre Royal Haymarket, 22/08/24

Credit: Alex Brenner

Final rating: ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

In the summer of 2023, Christopher Nolan gave us the cinematic titan, Oppenheimer, focussing on the man at least somewhat responsible for creating the atomic bomb. This was the stage edition, and it felt more like Sloppy-heimer. It tells the story of six of Germany’s leading nuclear scientists being detained at a country house in England called – yep – Farm Hall. And it is effectively an exploration of the sorts of conversations these men – and their egos – might’ve have had during their time there.

Let’s start with the writing – something the production can’t help. It’s dry, slow, and reeks of something now decades out of date. It was like watching a British Pathè archive recording of what theatre was like in the 1950’s. This might sound like a compliment to the old-timely feel of the production – but it isn’t something to celebrate. Perhaps about three jokes that landed, the rest very dull monologues or plot drip-feeding that made it a real slog to follow. Not because the plot was intricate or detailed, but because it was hard not to switch off. That for me was epitomised by two things: the ending – an unnecessary monologue that hammers home the ‘was he culpable, or wasn’t he?’ message, which is what the entire 1hr45 minutes has spent making us question, so it felt entirely redundant. And secondly – the closing of the first act and opening of the second: ‘they’ve dropped an atomic bomb’… freeze-frame, bomb sound effect, fade to black (and that again in reverse order to restart after the interval). Even comparing it to student theatre feels like a dis-service.

But the flaws continue. The direction was rather woeful. A stage full of SIX actors, all of them men with relatively similar accents – I’ll concede that it must have been quite challenging to find ways of bringing it to life and defining every character. But unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Actors moving from one corner of the room to the other, or going from sitting to standing to back to sitting again – it felt very untidily choreographed that the actors looked as though they didn’t know why they were moving around. And when you start noticing things like that – either you’ve got a strong eye for directing and can’t help it, or the action unfolding on stage is very poorly transparent. There was also a painfully long THREE MINUTES of silence on stage, as all six men wait for a radio news bulletin. Granted, it is attempting to build dread and tension, but it felt excruciatingly underwritten and the direction did nothing to keep the audience interested.

Credit where it is due – and there isn’t much I can give – Julius D’Silva was very watchable. He had a great presence and you got a sense of the sort of person he was. I think this was partly the acting and partly the writing – he seemed to be the only developed character. Nonetheless, D’Silva delivered his comic lines with great timing, and there were even a few ‘awhhhs’ from the audience at points – although those soon stopped when it was revealed he was a member of the Nazi party. In addition – the set was nicely designed – it definitely had a 1940’s safe house feel, with period furnishings and wallpaper. It was however completely static, never changing or transforming, which also contributed to the play’s sluggish pace. And because of its tiny size (which I think is as a result of its West End transfer from an otherwise tiny theatre with a 70-ish seat capacity) it felt totally lost on a stage the size of the Haymarket. It was never going to be able to compete with the likes of Accidental Death of An Anarchist – which I saw there last year.

Even the piano music, used to punctuate scene changes, was completely unbelievable. It felt like a low quality recording and came to abrupt stops at times to totally break the suggestion it was ever being actually played on the piano in the corner of the stage – which is the crux of an entire scene.

I left feeling wholly unsatisfied, sitting through the plodding story hoping there would be a twist or a shift to justify the exceptionally slow-burn. Sadly, it never arrived, and there wasn’t very much at all to redeem this production… in fact I have to wonder how it ever secured its transfer to the Haymarket at all.