Switzerland

Gripping. Tense. Hilarious. A sparkling gem of brilliant characterisation and vicious wit. This is one of those mind-blowingly great pieces of theatre that deserves a thesaurus of superlatives. Following on from their excellent productions of Playhouse Creatures and Summer of the 17^th Doll, Pigeonhole takes Joanna Murray-Smith’s incredible script and applies Jordan Best’s incredible facility for flow, timing and nuance to create a breathtaking experience. At the centre of it all is the virtuoso performance by Karen Vickery as Patricia Highsmith. Highsmith, in real life a massively successful thriller writer whose novels formed the basis for Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr Ripley, was famously unlikeable. Vickery captures the cynical, abrasive and impulsive nature of the scripted Highsmith (and by all accounts, that is what she was like). She is both hilarious and compelling. Highsmith here is a character primed from youth to attack as a defence mechanism. Using sheer strength of will, Highsmith dynamited a niche for herself in a world that rejected her as a non-conformist lesbian, writing in a much-disparaged genre. Vickery fills the stage with the intensity of her character, roaring with spite and wit, but with enough sensitivity to show how performative her outbursts of hostility are, to shield a vulnerability we can only assume is there but don’t get to see.

Her foil in this play is the underling sent by her publisher to get her to sign a contract for one last Tom Ripley exploit. Lachlan Ruffy’s Edward Ridgway at first comes across as a naïf idealist, a juicy fly for Highsmith as spider to chase around her study. Trying to impress with his knowledge of her work, he mutters clumsy similes (“the insidious figure of mortality”), and when he mispronounces a word, she cuts him off with a prolonged, withering boom: “Oevre!” But as they talk, he starts exploiting chinks in her armour: her curiosity, boredom and vanity. There are hints of her maltreatment of a previous young man sent by the same publisher, and suggestions that she identifies strongly with the murderous tendency of her psychopath protagonist. Adding to the tone of danger are Highsmith’s prized collection of vintage weaponry, displayed in neat shelves. Chekov is spoilt for choice. And there develops a strange and dark sexual tension between this older woman and the young man.

All this makes for a show which is riveting end to end. Beg, borrow or steal a ticket if you can.

Cathy Bannister

Photographer: David James McCarthy