A Tale of Two Cities: Blood for Blood

There really is a lot of plot in A Tale of Two Cities. Charles Dickens’ novel goes like clockwork, but the story of concealed identities, wrongful imprisonments and the French Revolution proves fiendish to follow in writer/director Jonathan Holloway’s stage version. There seems little attempt to render it truly theatrical either, beyond one bold staging decision: 100 wooden chairs fill the stage, each with a pair of shoes underneath. It’s a notion plucked, one presumes, from a line asking for empathy: “Wouldn’t you be mad, if you were in our shoes?” But the idea isn’t developed; the chairs signify little, and get in the way a lot.

There’s also little sense, in this curiously bloodless production, of the tumultuous political backdrop, the visceral terror of The Terror, or even the reasons behind it. Indeed, both costume and script occasionally slip loose of their historic moment. Dickens’ famous lines are knowingly discarded – it being the best of times and all that – and modern phrases are added: “We’re all in this together.” But unless we have a sense of which political epochs are being yoked, no point is made.  

Still, much of the acting is overcooked in period drama fashion. With Lucie Manette just a prissy prig, and Charles Darnay an uppish toff, the story of a man’s ennobling self-sacrifice tilts off balance. That said, Graeme Rose nails the yearning anguish of the martyred Sydney Carton, while Nicki Hobday gives a stand-out performance of sustained, focused ferocity as Madame Defarge, a woman sent swivel-eyed with grief.