The Guardian - Friday March 26, 2004 Michael Billington Extraordinary how responsive Festen is to different interpretations. Thomas Vinterberg's original 1998 Dogme film had the feel of docu-drama. A recent Polish stage version turned the story into doom-laden Shakespearean tragedy. Now David Eldridge's adaptation heightens the work's element of black comedy. The subject of childhood sexual abuse is obviously no laughing matter; and we are suitably appalled as a Danish patriarch is accused by his son, at a 60th birthday party, of raping him and his late sister. But both Rufus Norris's production and Eldridge's text show there is something grotesque about the guests' reaction. The accusation is greeted with awkward silence. A guest remarks that the revelations are not helping his depression. The brilliance of this version lies in the tension between the decorousness of the occasion and the dire nature of the revelations; and the horror is even more acute because of the heightened absurdity. Jane Asher, impeccable as the patriach's grimly smiling wife, pays tribute to her "wonderful granddaughter" only to swat her away like a fly. And one watches with incredulity as Robert Pugh, the disgraced father, turns up the next morning to tell his son, Christian, "well fought, my boy." But the beauty of Norris's production is that it implies familial disintegration from the outset. The first sound we hear is that of a child's unnerving laughter. Jonny Lee Miller's excellent Christian is initially seen in brooding solitude like a man tense with expectation. Above all, Norris reminds us this is a work about social hypocrisy. It offers us a formal celebration in which no one stands up to speak without first tapping their glass: what it uncovers is a world of paternal abuse, wifely complicity and racism. Admirably designed by Ian MacNeil and flawlessly acted, it suggests not merely that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark but that pomp and ceremony are universally a mask for guilt. - - - - - - - - - - - - The Stage - 1 April 2004 Based on the first of the Dogme films, which received huge acclaim when it was seen in this country, Festen is, if anything, even more gripping in David Eldridge's stage version. It begins with family and guests arriving for the 60th birthday of the brusque and frosty Helge, a Danish businessman who is disappointed in his children, in that Christian and Michael are both in the restaurant business, while his daughter Mette is living with a black man and another daughter has recently committed suicide, for no apparent reason that Helge can see. But this death is just the tip of a massive iceberg set in motion by the obviously unhappy Christian, who calmly relates, during the congratulatory speeches, that he and his dead sister were regularly sexually abused by his father during their childhood. This obviously changes the mood of the dinner and provides the major element in the play. What on earth can happen through this ghastly disclosure? The strength of the play is that very little happens, except for brief embarrassment. The glacial Helge neither confirms nor refutes the charge, his wife Helene maintains a unrevealing silence, the non-family guests try to pretend that nothing has occurred and even go through the songs they have sung on similar occasions. The effect is truly shocking in a way that convinces because of its surprise, the horror brushed aside, to be recollected later, after the silent, uncomfortable breakfast. The director, Rufus Norris, has achieved a marvellous piece of theatre, helped by his inventive designer Ian MacNeil. It is matched by some of the most convincing acting to be currently seen in London, Robert Pugh and Jane Asher as Helge and Helene, Jonny Lee Miller as Christian, Tom Hardy as the explosive Michael and a strikingly well cast supporting company. By Peter Hepple - - - - - - - - - - - - The Stage - 27 September 2004 Something is rotten in the state of the upper crust Danish family that has gathered in a magnificent country house hotel to celebrate the 60th birthday of the clan’s wealthy patriarch. The occasion is supposed to run on familiar, well-rehearsed lines, instead it descends into nightmare when the eldest son departs from the script and accuses his father of sexual abuse. David Eldridge’s dramatisation of Danish director Thomas Vinterberg’s 1998 film, which premiered at the Almeida earlier this year, has happily lost little of its power to shock and enthral in its transfer to the West End. Festen was the first film to be made under the now notorious edicts of the Dogme school of stripped-down, back to basics filmmaking and Rufus Norris’ gripping production shares the movie’s raw energy. There is, however, nothing artless about his impeccably crafted staging. Paul Arditti’s eerie sound design establishes a sense of unease right from the outset. The noise of dripping water and a child’s nervous laughter is curiously unsettling. When Luke Mably’s edgy, overstrung Christian drops his bombshell, we comprehend that the sounds disturbingly echo the childhood bathtimes when he and his twin sister, the recently deceased Linda, were raped by their father. Festen is not unrelentingly grim, though. There are moments of ghastly black comedy as the older generation’s efforts to uphold proprieties become increasingly farcical. The family and their guests are determined to stick to the time-honoured rituals, including the singing of boisterous, boorish songs and the tapping of glasses to announce a speech. When Christian takes the floor, Stephen Moore’s imperious, patrician father disdainfully brushes off the accusations. But with moral support below stairs from Andrew Frame’s chef and Ruth Millar’s waitress, Mably’s anguished son steels himself to his task until the force of his revelations shatter even the icy poise of his mother - a truly chilling Jane Asher - and his father’s carapace of arrogant self-possession. By: David Eldridge, based on the film and play by Thomas Vinterberg, Mogens Rukov and Bo hr Hansen Composer: Orlando Gough Management: Almeida Theatre in association with Marla Rubin and Bill Kenwright Cast: Jason Baughan, Sam Beazley, Sam Cox, Andrew Maud, Stephen Moore, Lisa Palfrey, Patrick Robinson, Michael Thomas, William Beck, Morven Christie, Paul Nicholls, Carol Royle, Susannah Wise Director: Rufus Norris Design: Ian MacNeil Sound: Paul Arditti Lighting: Jean Kalman Costumes: Joan Wadge Run time: 1hr 50mins - - - - - - - - - - - - Wednesday December 22, 2004 The Guardian Michael Billington The horror, the horror Tragedy has finally made a comeback - and nowhere did it strike more powerfully than in Festen, the year's best play It's the sounds one remembers most. The clink of a spoon on a wine glass. The laughter of a child. The gush of running water. All these reverberate through Festen, the Dogme film famously made into a play and running at the Lyric Shaftesbury in London. And, at the year's end, I find Paul Arditti's remarkable soundscape still echoes in my brain and unlocks memories of an event that signifies a major shift in the development of modern theatre: the rebirth of tragedy. For decades we have been told that tragedy, however valid in the past, is a dead duck today. George Steiner observed that Christian faith and Marxist certainty were inimical to tragedy. And, even when confronted by the horrors of the 20th century, dramatists have tended to highlight the ironic absurdity of the human condition. Samuel Beckett has frequently been compared to Aeschylus; but Beckett's view is essentially anti-tragic in that it assumes our only hope is to battle on in the face of a mockingly indifferent universe. Admittedly, dramatists have tried to adapt Greek tragic myths to modern times. But, with a few exceptions such as Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra, such plays mostly come across as literary exercises. Even Marina Carr found herself in difficulties when transposing the Medea story to rural Ireland in By the Bog of Cats. A modern setting prompted questions such as why the local Garda and social services showed so little interest in a woman with a tendency to murder her relatives. You can't simply pour new wine into old bottles. Tragedy will only survive if it adapts to the modern age, which it reassuringly shows signs of doing. Steiner suggested the tragedy of the future might be based on documented fact and become a way of honouring the dead; which is more or less what happens in Antony Sher's astonishing Primo. Edward Albee in The Goat shows how tragedy - in the sense of the destruction of an individual - can spring from an unimaginable obsession. But the creators of Festen - Thomas Vinterberg, Mogens Rukov and Bohr Hansen - take tragedy in startling new directions, redefining it for the modern age. In a sense, even Festen acknowledges the past. Like Hamlet or Hecuba, it is about revenge in which a son, symbolically named Christian, destroys a father by accusing him of raping him and his twin sister; and David Eldridge acknowledges the play's antecendents by peppering his English version with Hamlet references. Like virtually all great tragedy, it is also a play about families: the once-sacred unit torn asunder by guilty revelations as in The Oresteia or Oedipus Rex. But several things make this a tragedy for today. The main one, too little commented on, is the way the characters preserve their social rituals in the face of amazing accusations. At his 60th birthday a businessman is accused of repeatedly abusing his children, yet the charge is ignored, the dinner goes on and the host's masonic chum makes sycophantic speeches. Only after the dead daughter's incriminating letter is produced does the party break up and the host become shunned. Edmund Burke allegedly said, "It is only necessary for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph," and the real theme of Festen is the tragedy of moral inertia. Even the hero, Christian, has a choice of two speeches to deliver at the dinner. It is pure chance that his father chooses the damaging one. Christian's sister, Helene, does everything to silence her brother even though she has read the girl's suicide note and is a committed radical. Worst of all, the host's wife has witnessed the crimes and preserved a glacial silence. She, as much as he, is the guilty party. Festen is a contemporary tragedy precisely because it shows how we use social rituals to protect ourselves against sin: significantly, it is the servants, rather than the family, who persuade Christian to pursue his father. But Festen is also a tragedy for today in that it shows moral inertia as a cancer that spreads through society, affecting everything from the class system to racial attitudes. The guests who overlook their host's sins treat Helene's black boyfriend as a creature from another planet to be patronised and insulted. Much of the impact of Festen depends on Rufus Norris's production - much better than the film in that it choreographs the action with exquisite precision and turns the host's living grandchild into a visual echo of his dead daughter. But Norris, one of the best directors in captivity, reveals another way in which Festen redefines tragedy: it captures the desolate, heartbreaking anticlimax that follows momentous and shocking events. Chekhov, of course, pointed the way. Desmond MacCarthy said of Uncle Vanya that the last act, in which the hero and his niece get back to the neglected farm accounts, conveyed that dreariest of all sensations: "Beginning life again on the flat, when a few hours before it has run shrieking up the scale of pain till it seemed the very skies might split." But Festen goes further: it shows the characters quietly breakfasting after the night before and the father, hauntingly played by Stephen Moore, unable to find the words to express his shame. This is a play, among other things, about the dwindling vocabulary of guilt. We live, the authors imply, in a capitalist society, shorn of religious feelings, where we lack the words to express our pain or torment. In Norris's production, that final scene is as overwhelming as anything on the London stage. It also confirms my feeling that Festen is a landmark play: one that gives new life to tragedy by showing how it can be wrought out of our emotional inarticulacy and moral vacancy. · Festen is at the Lyric Theatre, London W1, until April 2. Box office: 020-7494 5045.