Tristram Shandy, Reverend Productions – theSpaces @ Surgeons Hall

**** (4 stars)

Reverend Productions did an excellent job in rendering Sterne’s 500-odd page, comic novel into a play that lasted just under an hour. The adaptation used a modern concept to portray the metafictional nature of the text: by having Tristram relate his story to a psychiatrist; otherwise the events were true to the narrative. This modern take worked well though, as the psychiatrist, dressed in entirely subdued modern clothes, sat aside and debated the events that were narrated by an eighteenth century dressed Tristram.

The constant and pressing need that Sterne satirises in his novel, to make the story progress at an unnatural pace, was voiced by the psychiatrist who insisted that Tristram should, for his own state of well-being, tell his story. The hour long play that ensued was comic and entertaining as well as faithful to the body and the ethos of the text, as Tristram proceeded to be diverted by irrelevant details, much to the distraction of his psychiatrist.

The lead carried off the cheeky and egotistic nature of Tristram with a charm that was very endearing. The range of madcap characters appearing in Tristram’s anecdotes were played by two actors, who swapped roles regularly, but always with clear costuming and physical signals to portray who they were playing. These two were very funny in depicting the exaggerated and ridiculous characters that stood out against the relative sanity of Tristram. The character of the psychiatrist, whose normality and confusion nicely reflected that of the audience, was also asked by Tristram, to play a character, at various points, a clever ploy that acknowledged their small company, and also provided very comic results. Interjecting the narrative with the commentary of Tristram and his psychiatrist as well as using the two of them to help it along at moments, not only made good use of a small cast, but was also a clever way to depict the metafiction.

Simple set design, lighting and staging, mimic the way in which this company refused to be drawn in by the complexities of the text and instead created a thoroughly enjoyable and faithful adaptation of a well loved novel.

Laura Witz