The Stage

Rain Man

Published Monday 22 September 2008 at 10:35 by Mark Shenton

At least Rain Man has not been turned into a jukebox musical, or someone might have thought of interpolating It’s Raining Men into it. On the other hand, that might have relieved the slightly dull, rather worthy air that clings to this stage version of the 1988 film.

Its story tries to put a human face on the challenges of autism, as a man discovers the older brother he never knew he had has been hidden away in an institution for most of his adult life, and frees him from it - not, in turns out, in an act of selfless goodwill, but in order to make a claim on the inheritance their father has left to the autistic savant sibling only.

That much won’t be a surprise to anyone who knows the film already, but the surprise instead is just how leaden and undramatic the result turns out to be in Terry Johnson’s unimaginative staging. Part of the problem in taking this road/buddy movie off the screen and parking it onstage means that the action loses some momentum. Their six-day journey across America is reduced to a series of interior shots as opposed to landscapes.

Jonathan Fensom’s snappily designed sets keep the momentum moving fluidly between them in a series of cinematically-framed boxes, relieved only by one widescreen composite photographic image of Las Vegas at night.

But if there’s a literalness to the sets, there’s also an obvious air of duplication and repetitive quality to the performances, too, with Tom Cruise from the film swapped for another blandly handsome Hollywood actor Josh Hartnett as car dealer Charlie, whose unresolved family issues are finally challenged by meeting his brother Raymond.

British actor Adam Godley invests the latter with some pathos and dignity, but sentimentalises him, too, unlike Dustin Hoffman’s Oscar winning performance in the film.