Performances are solid and do help to break some of the visual monotony. However, all in all, I would recommend picking up Josephine Tey’s book over this well-meaning, at times interesting, always enthusiastic, but sadly flawed stage adaptation.
In 1951, Josephine Tey published The Daughter of Time, her fifth novel featuring Inspector Grant, a rather peculiar yet riveting blend of murder mystery and historical investigation that is now celebrated as one of the greatest murder mystery novels ever published. Now Josephine Tey’s novel has arrived on the stage at Charing Cross Theatre, care of writer M. Kilburg Reedy and director Jenny Eastop. But does this complex historical investigation translate effectively to the stage? For this critic, the jury is firmly out on that question.
Alan Grant (Rob Pomfret) is confined to a hospital bed with a broken leg and a strained back following a pursuit gone awry. With the hospital walls threatening to close in on him, he becomes fascinated by a portrait of King Richard III, a man vilified in history as a murderer, tyrant, and scoundrel, based on the writings of Thomas More around 1513 and the play by William Shakespeare circa 1592. As Grant stares at the portrait, a simple question enters his mind: “Is this really the face of a brutal killer?” With the help of his friends Marta Hallard (Rachel Pickup) and Nigel Templeton (Noah Huntley), and a young researcher Brent Carradine (Harrison Sharpe), Grant is determined to attempt to solve a historical puzzle clouded by speculation, politics, power and propaganda, all from the confines of his hospital bed.
The single set of a hospital room is a good place to start this review. Sometimes there’s a good reason why a novel has never been adapted for stage or screen. While a book allows a reader to enter the thoughts, internal conflicts, and memories of a character, allowing them to become the person lying in a hospital bed, the stage and the screen rely on collaboration and multi-sensory engagement to allow the audience in. The single-set restrictions of the adaptation, while initially engaging, soon become tedious, despite the strong performances of the cast. Many chamber plays utilise the single set to their advantage by immersing the audience in the action and emotion on stage; however, here the action is restricted by the main character being bed-bound for the whole first half, with his bed positioned toward the rear of the stage. This creates a barrier of vacant space between the audience and Grant. While other characters attempt to break this barrier (e.g. nurses and visitors), it remains problematic throughout much of Eastop’s production.
Then we have the dialogue and themes. The Daughter of Time is, at times, a heavy read, as it navigates historical fact, fiction, speculation, and propaganda while also centring its story on the needs of a bed-bound detective who is addicted to his work. While M. Kilburg Reedy’s adaptation honours Josephine Tey’s work, at two hours and forty-five minutes, including the interval, it asks for audience investment in historical debates that never truly spark on stage. As a result, this history-loving critic found himself checking his watch on several occasions rather than being swept up in one of history’s greatest mysteries.
There are positives: performances are solid and do help to break some of the visual monotony. However, all in all, I would recommend picking up Josephine Tey’s book or listening to the 2005 Radio 4 audio production over this well-meaning, at times interesting, always enthusiastic, but sadly flawed stage adaptation.
The Daughter of Time, a new play based on Josephine Tey’s seminal crime novel, is now playing at Charing Cross Theatre. Book Tickets.
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