Description:

 Laura Turner went to see When Harry Met Sally at The Theatre Royal Nottingham.

 

When Harry Met Sally is, unquestionably, a classic. I for one can hardly picture New York cafes without hearing that immortal line: “I’ll have what she’s having”. So it was with a faint sense of pessimism that I arrived at the Theatre Royal for Marcy Kahan’s adaptation of the unforgettable twentieth century film. But I should not have feared.

 

Tim McQuillen-Wright has designed a pleasingly clean and minimal set, white doors and staging blocks giving a suggestion of an interior domestic space that was complemented by a simple but ever-changing selection of props and furniture. Maintaining the pace and immediacy of the original was an admirable feat, achieved simultaneously by Kahan’s punchy dialogue and director Michael Gyngell’s focus on embracing and celebrating the short, snappy structure of the text, rather than attempting to conceal it. Contrasting lengthy scenes at the start of the play, as Harry and Sally first encounter each other, with the punchy, anecdotal interludes that reflect their growing friendship and intimacy, the play reinvents the spiky encounters that populate the 1989 original (Sally and Harry’s awkward car journey is re-envisaged as a static meeting in Sally’s new apartment). Lighting designer Ben Cracknell created a subtle pallet of warm tones, marking the end of scenes with comical precision: abrupt blackouts ruptured the actors’ tableaux, leaving you always wanting more. A simplistically atmospheric “New York” cityscape provided backdrop, shaded with warm or cold hues according to the mood. This quickly established the romance of their annual hilltop New Year celebrations, pinpricks of light piercing the darkness to allude to the distant but ever-present life of the city.

 

This was a slick production, Dunn, Hill and the rest of the cast and crew negotiating quick and elaborate scene and costume changes. The addition of the Cullum brothers’ jazzy soundtrack coloured these “in-between” times and Marie’s documentary-esque “How we met” art installation turned any pauses in the action into part of the experience. Temporal progression was established by Kahan through dialogue rather than exposition to confidently negotiate a story that embraces more than a decade of the protagonists’ lives and is, as Sarah Jane Dunn’s voice amusingly reminds us through the darkness at the end of the play, twelve years and three months in the making.

 

Dunn shone from the moment she appeared as the neurotic twenty-one year old Sally, her animated facial expressions lighting up the stage from the first scene to the last. She showed no sign of embarrassment during that unforgettable scene, bringing a self-conscious comedy to some classic “Sally-isms”, such as the awkward snuggle that follows “the sex part”. Although Dunn occasionally came close to pushing her reactions too far, this actually contributed to her perkily OCD character, contrasting Rupert Hill’s likeably obnoxious Harry. We face the same dilemma as Sally: in the play’s updated “Y2K” setting, is Harry’s attitude objectionably old-fashioned, or just a little too close to the truth? Hill’s comically laidback, deadpan delivery memorialised Billy Crystal’s iconic performance without imitating, and brought a cockiness and irreverence to the character that developed slowly and convincingly into an emotional vulnerability. The use of a small ensemble cast aptly conjured an impression of a larger cast, and the dynamic between Kosha Engler and Luke Rutherford as Marie and Jack proficiently contrasted Harry and Sally’s tempestuous friendship. One flaw was perhaps the use of canned laughter and applause at Marie and Jack’s wedding, lacking the “wacky” realism of the rest of the play.

 

But this was a small drawback in a performance that felt, from start to finish, like a lovable pastiche to Nora Ephron’s screenplay, with all of the most memorable lines delivered in well-maintained New Yorker accents that warmly recollected Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal’s original performances. When Harry Met Sally is an iconic film, but if Jamie Wilson’s production is anything to go by, it stands to be remembered as a romantically loveable and uproariously funny stage play in its own right.

 

 

 

 

When Harry Met Sally plays at Nottingham's Theatre Royal from Mon 26 April to Saturday 1 May 2010.