Atonement (Chichester Festival Theatre) - Review 

I HAVE to admit, adapting Ian McEwan’s Atonement felt like a tall order given the broad sweep of the novel, already so beautifully adapted for the big screen by Joe Wright in his outstanding 2007 movie.

How could certain key scenes be brought to life within the confines of a stage: whether it be the sprawling WWII scenes around Dunkirk or even the emerging from the cold water of a garden fountain of one of the key characters. Or even the catastrophic drowning of wartime Londoners at Balham Underground Station following a direct bomb hit in 1940 (another of the book and film’s pivotal moments)?

And yet director Adam Penford and his creative team (including Christopher Hampton, who has adapted the screenplay just as he did with the film) have found some ingenious ways of bringing the book to life.

Atonement on stage is an often dazzling experience. But it’s also one that retains the power of the novel and its ability to break your hearts .

It’s timely too, given that it receives its world premiere amid the real-life backdrop of the wrongful imprisonment of Andrew Malkinson, 17 years ago, for a rape he did not commit.

At its heart, Atonement is about doomed love. But it also deals with the consequences of choices, of false accusations and the repercussions of having to live with both. It also examines class and how it shapes and guides society.

Split between many years, with a narrative that jumps back and forth in time, the action picks up begins in 1935, at a country mansion, where medical hopeful Robbie (Jasper Talbot, taking on the James McAvoy role) and rich socialite Cecilia (Miriam Petche, in the Keira Knightley role) embark on a tentative romance aware of the social divide that exists between them (Robbie has been financially assisted in his studies by Cecilia’s wealthy family, having been abandoned by his own father).

Observing them from a distance is 13-year-old Briony (Isabella Dempster), who becomes privy to a key letter between them, as well as witness to a sexual encounter, before then later observing the fallout of a sexual assault on another woman that she falsely blames on Robbie.

It is an accusation that sends Robbie to prison and, belatedly, to the front lines of the Second World War, while also promoting Cecilia to turn her back on her family and pursue a career as a nurse.

Briony, meanwhile, must live with the consequences of her truth and spends her life attempting to atone, culminating in a last act revelation (set in 1999) that contains yet more emotionally devastating revelations.

Clocking in at a tight 105 minutes, Atonement has a lot to do and convey in a relatively short space of time and, early on, has you simultaneously scrambling to register who everyone is, while gasping at the ingenuity of the production design.

But thanks to the fine work of its primary performers - and Talbot and Petche in particular - you find yourself hooked and even tearful come the midway point, as Robbie and Cecilia find their passion curtailed by the bombshell accusations.

The second half moves around a fair bit, switching between war-torn France, St James Park, the English countryside and trauma ridden hospitals, but it continues to pack an emotional punch, right down to its heart-breaking finale.

The performances are terrific, with Talbot and Petche standing out, imbuing their characters with equal parts passion, sorrow, torment and anger. Talbot, in particular, lends Robbie an endearing Everyman quality that makes his fate all the more year-inducing - a decent, ambitious man whose life is cruelly ripped away from him.

But Petche is somewhat less petulant than Knightley and perhaps a little more ferocious, her impassioned plea to Robbie to “come back” laden with tragedy. She also wears that green dress in suitably ravishing fashion.

Also a standout is Dempster, especially as the young Briony - full of petulance, arrogance, precociousness and fateful naivety; her actions as much informed by her own rejection at Robbie’s hands (revealed in one incredibly well staged flashback) as her own youthful inability to understand the events and emotions of the older people around her.

For a 21-year-old, she also transforms herself incredibly well into the body of a 13-year-old, displaying a perfect physicality. But as the older, more aware Briony during her nursing years, she’s also highly convincing, especially in the way that she wears the burden of her mistruths as plainly as her uniform.

Jessica Turner, stepping in for Sian Phillips in a role played on-screen by Vanessa Redgrave, also ensures that Briony’s final scenes, as an older woman turned novelist, confronting a dementia diagnosis, while recalling her guilt for her actions as well as the embellishments she made to Robbie and Cecilia’s story, ensures the cruel twists that McEwan’s text had in store retain their gut-punching power.

Elsewhere, I also have to pay special attention to the staging, which is often incredible.

Anthony Ward has divided the action on a split level stage, allowing for scenes to interact with each other seamlessly. A pre-dinner party drinks sequence downstairs is wonderfully juxtaposed with a changing of dresses for Cecelia that is both eye-catching and a superb showcase of the show’s costume design.

While the way in which the garden fountain appears from beneath the stage, full of cold water for Cecelia to jump into (which she does, becoming soaked in the process) is truly ingenious - and I’m still not really sure how Petche got dry in time for her next scene!

Similarly impressive was the flashback moment in which both Dempster and Talbot jump into a river and its ensuing underwater sequence.

While Andrzej Goulding’s projection work, which allowed the audience to read letters as they were being typed, or to read subtitles when characters spoke in French, was also really clever.

And Alexandra Faye Braithwaite’s score is also striking, lending gravitas and a sense of urgency or impending tragedy.

The decision not to attempt to recreate the Underground tragedy was perhaps not surprising, given the complexity involved, but the revelation of both Robbie and Cecelia’s fates was sufficiently well realised (verbally and visually) to illicit tears.

If there were minor criticisms, then perhaps some of Hampton’s script was a little too glib at certain moments - prompting laughs from the audience that felt at odds with some of the material (particularly during the first act).

And the show’s tight running time perhaps made things feel a little rushed at times - it could easily have run to two hours without feeling stretched.

But in the main, this was a hugely impressive adaptation: thought-provoking, resonant, powerful and moving. It provided a memorable theatre experience.