The Stage

The Portrait of a Lady

Published Thursday 24 July 2008 at 12:10 by Jeremy Brien

Nicki Frei’s episodic stage version of one of Henry James’ most famous novels, given its world premiere at the start of the Peter Hall Company summer season in Bath, is set in Rome, Florence, London and the English countryside. So Peter Mumford’s marble-pillared set and back-projected photographic panoramas are all-important as the backcloth to the story of impressionable young American heiress Isabel Archer, who is “doing Europe” on what seems to be a journey of discovery as much about herself as the countries she visits.

James himself was an American who lived in London for a good part of his life, so was well placed to capture the mixture of innocence and sophistication, as well as the penchant for intrigue, of his fellow countrymen abroad.

Isabel is played by the splendid Catherine McCormack, in repertory with the not dissimilar role of Nora in A Doll’s House, but with the fascinating contrast that, unlike Nora, she sees it as her duty in the end to stay with her bully of a husband, even though his intellectual attractions have long since faded.

Finbar Lynch is suitably unpleasant in this role. Isabel’s various lovers and admirers are given rounded personalities by Dan Fredenburgh (Lord Warburton), Anthony Howell (Ralph Touchett) and Oliver Chris (Caspar Goodwood), and Niamh Cusack (Madame Merle), Jean Marsh (Mrs Touchett) and Susie Trayling (Henrietta Stackpole) manipulate the marriage market trap into which Isabel so disastrously tumbles.