Racine on screen: Phédre at Steppenwolf

In his essay “Theatre and Cinema,” the great French film critic André Bazin wrote, “Only Racine has the right to make an adaptation of Phédre,” though unfortunately, “Racine happens to be dead.” Chicago got a test case of Bazin’s thesis Monday, when Steppenwolf screened a film version of Jean Racine's great tragedy, produced by London's National Theatre and starring Helen Mirren as the lascivious and doomed Athenian queen. (New York got to see it a few weeks back.)

The verdict? The full house at Steppenwolf enjoyed a memorable cinematic/theatrical evening.Early signs were a little ominous, with an ill-advised fifteen-minute “making-of” doc introducing the film. Audience members oohed when they heard that Jeremy Irons hosted this behind-the-scenes, but Irons’s fidgety and oddly skeptical Q&A with director Nicholas Hytner framed against the backdrop of a posh London cocktail party did little to stir enthusiasm.

The intro may have expressed Hytner’s apprehension about this admittedly experimental approach to presenting theater to far-flung audiences. But the production itself, anchored by a beautiful, stark set design by Bob Crowley—one part Mediterranean, one part abstract painting—needs no such help. Blazing supporting performances by Ruth Negga, Margaret Tyzack, and John Shrapnel highlight the trio of portrayals, both strong and searching, at the heart of the tragedy: Dominic Cooper’s vulnerable, valiant Hippolytus; a Theseus both rash and wrathful, as played by Stanley Townsend; and above all, Mirren in the French stage’s pinnacle role.

As Phédre, torn apart by her forbidden love for her stepson, Mirren offers a master class in passionate gesture and utterance. Her queen is at once pitiably weak, driven by desires she strives to master, and terribly manipulative. If her performance falters at all, it’s perhaps in the formidable self-possession that Mirren seems incapable of casting off altogether—some lines in her final speeches drew incongruous laughter, as though the audience couldn’t quite believe her claims to lack self-awareness so thoroughly.

Blame the camera, in part: Phédre may be a role that needs the theater’s combination of distance and physical heft. Similarly, Margaret Tyzack’s brilliant performance as the scheming maid Oenone was at times punctuated too heavily with sitcom-style reaction shots. On the whole, though, the National Theatre has found an effective way of sharing its work with audience that might otherwise never see it. They plan to continue this fall with All’s Well That Ends Well. Now if only other great European theaters, such as Austria’s Burgtheater or Warsaw’s National Theater, might follow suit. . .