UK Theatre Network

This Royal Exchange world premiere reunites Oscar-nominated actress Brenda Blethyn with director Braham Murray and designer Simon Higlett after their highly acclaimed collaboration on The Glass Menagerie last year.

Haunted is by distinguished Irish writer Edna O’Brien, perhaps best known for her novels, although equally at home scripting television, film and theatre.  In fact Haunted began life as a 1963 TV play starring Cyril Cusack, and in a nice coincidence his grand-daughter Beth Cooke plays one of the three characters in this stage translation.

Mr Berry, a semi-retired house-husband in London’s suburbia, becomes infatuated with Hazel, a young elocution teacher with an interest in vintage clothing.  Immediately smitten on their first chance encounter, he keeps luring her back to his house by “donating” items from his wife’s wardrobe.  Poor Mrs Berry, meantime, spends her days working in a doll factory and has no idea that her treasured possessions are being plundered, although she senses there’s something going wrong with her marriage (again).

As Mr Berry is the central character and narrator it’s impossible not to compare him with William Hazlitt, whose semi-autobiographical novel Liber Amoris is also a first-person account of the male menopause and its obsessions, passions and madness.  Although Niall Buggy is blithe and ingratiating, pottering around in his comfy carpet slippers and aspirational bow-tie, the audience can never experience his point of view as the reader of a book would: we only see his folly rather than share his hope.

Beth Cooke, who has just received a commendation from the Ian Charleson award panel for her performance in the Exchange’s production Three Sisters last autumn, brings a genuine sense of innocence and guilelessness to Hazel, as well as a detachment that is always at odds with any amorous ambitions Mr Berry might have.

Although the play is Mr Berry’s, the evening belongs to Mrs Berry.  Brenda Blethyn is brilliant as the frowsy, fussy, lower-middle-class factory worker who still cares passionately about her man and her marriage.  She manages to be comic, tragic, irritating and sympathetic all at once, and makes the audience long as much as she does for a happy ending – hers, not her husband’s.  This wonderful depiction is ably aided by the design, costume and wig departments - the cut-off raincoat and silk headscarf nail her era and class at a glance, and the immaculately-coloured helmet-like coiffeur seems made to withstand any marital storm.  Moreover, after spending all day on her stilettoed feet Mrs Berry doesn’t instantly kick off her shoes as she walks through the door like a mere mortal would, but instead reclines sensuously into the armchair, a domesticated Cleopatra, daintily sipping a glass of Madeira.  What a woman!  Mr Berry clearly doesn’t deserve her.

Haunted is on until Saturday 13 June 2009

Prices: £8.50-£29.00

Evenings: Mon-Fri @ 7.30pm, Sat @ 8pm

Matinees: Wed @ 2.30pm, Sat @ 4pm

Box Office: 0161 833 9833

www.royalexchange.co.uk