Daftly do Maurier

My Cousin Rachel Gate Theatre Until May 19 €25-€35 (students Mon- Thurs €15) gate-theatre.ie

“They used to hang men at Four Turnings in the old days,” begins Daphne Du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel. Well, not any more. As the opening line of her Gothic novel of sexual suspicion, set in 19th-century Cornwall, it was the first thing to go in Joseph O’Connor’s new adaptation for the Gate, unfussily directed by Toby Frow. Instead, we get all the trappings of straight-up costume drama, from brisk exposition to slathered-on mystery.

Philip Ashley (Michael Legge, gorgeous) is to inherit the Cornwall estate of his once reliably misogynist guardian Ambrose, whose mysterious death comes shortly after his mysterious marriage to a mysterious Italian, Rachel (Hannah Yelland, gorgeouser). From here on in it is next to impossible to take the show seriously, which makes the production’s earnestness all the more bewitching.

Francis O’Connor’s set and costumes are sumptuous with detail and just a hint of abstraction, while O’Connor comically enhances the play’s gender-addled conceit. But the real balancing act is in the performances: Legge is admirably committed, Stephen Brennan’s sardonic adviser stays a hair’s breadth from subversion, and Yelland (left) suggests both mystique and hardened pragmatism.

With the psychology of Gothicism and Du Maurier’s much darker narration, it could all plumb so much deeper, but there’s a lot of pleasure to its surface.

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