My Cousin Rachel

Gate Theatre, Dublin

At first, life in the Cornwall estate of the late Ambrose Ashley is handsomely free of complication. A patriarchal 19th-century idyll where fencing swords and mounted antlers hang solemnly on the walls; where servants, all male, drop their aitches in endless ‘appiness with their lot; and where women, while free to visit, are for all practical purposes, banned. The estate will soon be inherited by Ambrose’s besotted young charge, Philip (Michael Legge). What menace could possibly shatter this stiffened-collar Eden?

“Murder goes by many names,” says Philip on the mysterious death of Ambrose, whose Italian widow, Rachel, will soon arrive. “One of them is marriage.” This is just one of Joseph O’Connor’s unabashedly melodramatic interventions within a sinfully enjoyable, wholly undemanding adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s 1951 piece of Gothic fiction, one that seems less interested in frustrated desire and sexual anxiety or the imperialism of Victorian Britain, than the gratification of high production values and the propulsion of a well-told yarn.

Under the unfussy direction of Toby Frow, it makes few concessions, either to the brooding symbolism or unreliable narration of the novel, more intriguingly unhinged than straight dialogue will allow, or, indeed, to the more transformative possibilities of the stage. If anything, the sumptuous detail of Francis O’Connor’s costumes and the gentle, coastal references in his otherwise realistic set, the play’s briskly episodic structure, the tasteful rolls of thunder, liberal use of a voice-over, the fantastically nutty moments when servants and masters break into song, and the near competitive beauty of Hannah Yelland’s Rachel and Legge, all suggest the escapism of TV costume drama. Call it Downton Gate.

This, of course, is meant to be moderately unreal, loosening towards instability, and given the choice between playing along with its fevered tone of suspicion or nudging knowingly at its excess, the production opts, refreshingly, for earnestness. It’s fascinating to watch Legge and Stephen Brennan, as his sardonic adviser Nicholas, together. Legge’s naïf-turned-paranoiac never risks a pin prick of humour, while Brennan hovers exquisitely between po-faced delivery and arch comment. It’s actually a relief when Bryan Murray arrives, as an Italian stereotype, described as “the most outrageous exaggerator”, for which he is well cast.

It falls to Yelland, though, to reconcile the play’s gender themes (comically, then insightfully enhanced by O’Connor) with the breathless mystery of her character. Rachel, she knows, is the embodiment of a male fear and a fantasy, a black widow, a seductress, a ruinous gold-digger. Du Maurier’s corkscrew plot twists may make her a conundrum, but Yelland preserves a tightrope balance between mystique and battered pragmatism, alive to the fact that Rachel has been made – by her suitors and her author – a canvas for deep desires and dark imaginings.

It’s a stretch to call her a proto-feminist, and the pleasures of the production are right on the surface, but if you’re looking for something deeper, it’s a start.

Runs until May 5th