REVIEW: Lady Chatterley’s Lover/Malvern Theatres

FULL marks to Phillip Breen for arguably being the first director to

present this literary classic as the writer probably intended.

You could almost feel the presence of D H Lawrence’s ghost, rejoicing as the clichés invariably associated with his work were blasted out of the sky like so many of Sir Clifford Chatterley’s pheasants.

Most plays about the class-struck lovers ritually present them in the

language of tabloid headlines – ‘Rich bitch in woodland romps with

randy gamekeeper,’ that sort of thing.

But not Phillip Breen. His Oliver Mellors is a painfully sensitive

individual, rendered fragile by the trauma of war and the rigid, joyless class tyranny of the times.

Jonah Russell as Mellors perfectly conveys the contradictions of a man whose job as a gamekeeper must by definition entail the destruction as well as the preservation of life.

Hedydd Dylan’s portrayal as a woman torn between desire and duty is achingly moving. The ringing tone of her biological alarm clock has reached a deafening pitch and Mellors is more than ready to answer the call.

This is usually the stage when most directors give free rein to their own barely-disguised fantasies and turn the whole thing into a soft porn flesh-fest.

Mercifully, Phillip Breen instead concentrates on creating a multi-levelled tragedy in which the ultimate climax is one of heartbreak rather than passion.

Meanwhile, the wretched Sir Clifford (Eugene O’Hare) can only look on helplessly from his invalid’s wheelchair, as the long shadows of war inexorably turn his life to total darkness.

Breen’s superb adaptation marks a milestone in the history of a notorious story that has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons since it was written in the 1920s.

This definitive version should not be missed - it runs until Saturday

(November 5).

John Phillpott