At the Sydney Theatre Company - THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY by Patricia Highsmith Adapted for the stage by Joanna Murray-Smith Directed by Sarah Goodes.

 “After two films, a TV series, now on stage. What next? The musical?”

Thus said a friend when I sent him a photo of the poster above for the Sydney Theatre Company production billed as The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith Adapted for the stage by Joanna Murray-Smith Directed by Sarah Goodes. It has just started a season at the Roslyn Packer Theatre and is heading for Melbourne when that’s done.

With all those predecessors I wonder how many people in the house last night knew the story in some detail. My friend suggests possibly very few and cites the example of the Lloyd Webber musical version of Sunset Boulevard  though that theatre piece hadn’t been turned into a Netflix series only a year before. But the overlap between Netflix subscribers and STC attendees may indeed be that modest. However, given the general popularity at least of that recent Andrew Scott impersonation it seems likely that there would be more than a smattering seeking to relive once again the pleasure of watching Ripley get away with it. I was certainly one of those. (Only in René Clément’s original iteration with Alain Delon as Ripley is there a suggestion that the law is going to catch up with him.)

Patricia Highsmith

For those who know Ripley I wonder whether they there checking up to see if Joanna Murray-Smith was going to take liberties with the Highsmith original. Most crucially how was the playwright going to wrestle with the book’s alleged sublimated gay subtext. I always wondered about the emphasis on that element in the Anthony Minghella/Matt Damon iteration. It seemed to take Ripley on a path that in his later  appearances in four further novels never seemed to be pursued by the author.

The first Ripley, Alain Delon in Plein Soleil

And there was some curiosity about how  the STC playmakers were they going to manage a story whose setting moved from New York, the Amalfi Coast, Rome and Venice, taking in a murder on a boat, among others. The signifiers that moved the story on were smart indeed, managed entirely by a quick verbal indication and the rest done by the placement of objects on an otherwise bare stage. The bones of the production were on display via the appearance of the set changers and others such as those operating fans when the scene called for ‘windy’. It honed to Highsmith’s story very closely.

It’s played out by a group of six actors, only one of whom I had ever heard of,  Andrew  McFarlane, a stalwart of Crawfords best known for his role in The Sullivans. McFarlane played Dickie Greenleaf's father. The others were Will McDonald (Tom Ripley), Raj Labade (Dickie Greenleaf), Claude Scott-Mitchell (Marge Sherwood), Faisal Hamza (Freddie Miles) and Johnny Nasser as Inspector Roverini. Complete unknowns. Or maybe I should get out more often. All excellent anyway, especially Scott-Mitchell playing Marge, a character Highsmith herself reviled.

The play did it again… 

I’ve been a Highsmith fan for quite some time. Twenty five years ago I contributed a piece to Senses of Cinema which recalled encountering Highsmith on film, in her books and, briefly, in person. I mentioned the first time I saw her name on the credits of Clement's Plein Soleil: “The source material only registered on a second viewing, a novel titled The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. I started reading Highsmith at a rapid rate. At that time she had published seven or eight novels which she once described, very simply somewhere, as books in which she "studied the effects of guilt on her characters.” 

I don’t know when Joanna Murray-Smith made the same discovery of the author but over the years she has relished the relationship. Way back in 2014, the very first post on this blog was a report on her play Switzerland.  I rehashed the Senses piece there as well. That play was about Highsmith herself, the prickly personality but Ripley lurked around its edges.

A quick word search of the blog produces more than a few Highsmith references. There  was a review of the Plein Soleil DVD. (I expressed there much admiration for Geoffrey O'Brien's accompanying booklet.) There was a note about Todd Haynes version of Carol,  a book Highsmith originally published under the pseudonym Clare Morgan as “The Price of Salt”. There was a second stab at Carol a year later. John Baxter contributed an enthusiastic piece praising John Malkovich’s Ripley in Liliana Cavani’s adaptation of Ripley’s Game. Finally there was a note about a good documentary about Highsmith by Eva Vitija which screened at the Sydney Film Festival.

And here is a literary opportunity. Sydney’s Best Kept Secret Bookshop, Badger Books of Woollahra, has a set of first editions of the five Ripley novels, one of them inscribed by the author, plus some additional Highsmith memorabilia for sale. CLICK HERE if you are at all curious. Perhaps do so sitting down. There are a bunch of other Highsmith First Editions also on offer.

In the meantime the play’s the thing.