A Bird's Eye Review

Original Soundtrack - Buy from Amazon

Saturday May 15th, 2010.
Rating: 4 stars out of 5

This stage revival of writer Nora Ephron’s 1989 movie classic is directed by Michael Gyngell, whose previous credits include (as Associate Director) Olivier Award-winning The Play What I Wrote. Sally is played by ex-Hollyoaks star Sarah Jayne Dunn, whose stage work encompasses the comedy Boeing-Boeing and The Vagina Monologues. Harry’s role is taken by Rupert Hill, no stranger to TV audiences as Mike Baldwin’s son Jamie in Coronation Street. He has built up a body of stage work too, most recently as Adrian in Deceptions. Supporting roles come from RSC actor Luke Rutherford as Jack, and Kosha Engler as Marie. American-born Engler was nominated for Best Actress in the 2009 MEN theatre awards for her portrayal of Carol in David Mamet’s Oleanna at the Bolton Octagon. The cast is completed by Callum McArdle (Joe/Ira) who is a graduate of the Guildford School of Acting and Annabelle Brown (Helen) an accomplished singer soloist and actor, appearing most recently in A Christmas Carol at the King’s Head (Mokitagrit).

Music comes from celebrated brothers Ben and Jamie Cullum with lighting and sets from Ben Cracknell and Tim McQuillen-Wright respectively.



This production marks a recent trend in translating big-screen classics to the stage, beginning with a West End production of The Shawshank Redemption last year and with Fatal Attraction rumoured for a theatre showing late in 2010. It is not difficult to see why this has been a straightforward choice for a similar treatment. The adaptor of Ephron’s original work for the stage, Marcy Kahan, in her programme espousal, quotes playwright Christopher Hampton’s definition of a theatre play as: “The slow unfurling of a tightly knit argument, powered by rhetoric, while a screenplay relies on the eloquence of its images.” The spoken word primarily drives this as a drama, she argues, and that’s why, “in its deepest impulses, it is really a stage play.”

No argument there, but how to convey to a theatre audience those iconic performances by Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan that will surely overshadow any well-meant re-enactment?

For those who have recently emerged from cryogenic stasis or are unfamiliar with the story, When Harry Met Sally spans a dozen years as two New Yorkers weave sporadically in and out of each others’ lives with a different aspect on their relationship each time they do. It takes place throughout the yuppie decade of the 1990s, culminating at the millennial eve of 1999.

The action is played out on a simple, multi-level stage with a backdrop image of the New York skyline. Set and costume changes are crisp and unobtrusive, driving the story forward with fluency and confidence.

As with the original film, the play’s success hinges on the chemistry between the leading pair. This will determine whether the audience believes their journey, from Harry’s disavowal of Sally’s belief that ‘men and women can be friends’ to the conclusion of that truth in a way that satisfies expectations of both genders. Hill and Dunn’s performance achieves that by some measure (with Hill’s New ‘Yoik’ brogue impeccably maintained) but the supporting roles of Jack and Marie add a considerable amount too, bolstering the process with their engaging portrayal of the ‘happy couple’, hitting it off, by contrast, entirely without complication.

From a script of this quality, sparkling with impish wit and cutting observation, the actors could almost be forgiven for ‘phoning in’ their performances. Happily, that isn’t a temptation succumbed to by any of the cast here. Even the relatively limited roles of Brown (Helen) and McArdle (Joe/Ira) are polished and fulsome. For the audience, laughs and spontaneous applause are never far away, particularly after Sarah-Jane Dunn’s expertly comic-timed orgasm-faking in ‘that’ scene. But the overall experience is so much more than that, capturing the same feel-good quality of the movie that lasts long after we’ve ‘had some of what she’s having’.