'The Forsyte Saga Parts 1 and 2' review — this epic, wryly funny adaptation is an exhilarating shared experience

Read our review of The Forsyte Saga Parts 1 and 2, based on John Galsworthy’s award-winnin novels, now in performances at the Park Theatre to 7 December.

Bingeing a Netflix series in a day is perfectly normal, so why not have “box set” theatre? Troupe’s two-part adaptation of John Galsworthy’s Nobel Prize-winning The Forsyte Saga, by Shaun McKenna and Lin Coghlan, is an exhilarating shared experience, in which the audience travels on a journey through four decades of an upper-middle-class nouveau riche family’s tangled history (from 1886 to 1927), and, in the breathing space between acts, become collectively bonded in a way that rarely occurs at a usual two-act show.

The 1967 BBC adaptation was a landmark television drama; I saw the ITV adaptation (starring Damian Lewis and Gina McKee) at an age when it probably wasn’t entirely appropriate, yet many of the plot points have stuck vividly. Despite only having read part of the first volume as a teenager, I now feel qualified to talk about Galsworthy’s epic with the utmost authority. More than anything, it’s such a good story, and Soames Forsyte is a fascinating tragic protagonist.

McKenna and Coghlan’s adaptation was originally produced as a 15-hour Radio 4 drama in 2016-17 and Josh Roche’s understatedly sweeping staging, performed on a plain red plush set with only a few chairs for props, is all about the storytelling. It’s perfectly easy to imagine the stuffy drawing rooms and the airy modern country house, Robin Hill. Presented in two parts titled Irene and Fleur, the first part can stand alone (though it ends with a cliffhanger), but the second really needs the context of the first.

Both are narrated by the bob-haired, slacks-wearing Fleur (the wonderfully flippant Flora Spencer-Longhurst) – daughter of Soames and his former waitress second wife Annette, who claims she isn’t like the rest of her family but is undoubtedly a chip off the old block – relaying her family with a mixture of love, satire and exasperation (perhaps the way Galsworthy felt about his creations).

It’s the age of the British Empire, and Fleur remembers hearing stories of family gatherings dubbed “Forsyte Exchange”. The Forsytes are only a couple of generations away from being tenant farmers in Dorset and have made fortunes in law and commerce. They know how much everything costs but have little understanding of how much anything is worth beyond monetary value.

Joseph Millson, reprising his role from the radio production, is superb as Soames – buttoned-up and socially awkward with no sense of humour (though he is unintentionally droll). The way he “asserts his rights” as a husband (which, shockingly, wasn’t criminalised until 1991) is reprehensible and yet he himself isn’t entirely despicable, being so much a product of his environment.

Jamie Wilkes’s “black sheep” bohemian Forsyte Young Jolyon (“Jo”), living a “rackety” life in St John’s Wood, is more appealing to modern audiences, yet losing contact with his daughter for 15 years after going off with the nanny isn’t so wonderful.

Irene (Fiona Hampton), based on Galsworthy’s wife whom he worshipped and who was previously unhappily married to his cousin, is perhaps the original manic pixie dream girl, a beautiful enigma with whom every man falls madly in love. Upholstered in yellow silk, she’s probably the least interesting character as written in the saga but Hampton is a striking presence.

Spencer-Longhurst’s Fleur is a sweet-spoiled, thoroughly modern miss (“This is where we start the story of me!” she exclaims with glee) – as acquisitive as her father in her way but with a lightness and charm that he lacks. Andy Rush excels as the two male love interests, the dashing architect Philip Bosinney and poet-farmer Jon, son of Irene and Jo.

The multi-roleing Nigel Hastings and Michael Lumsden are both good value as Soames’s grumpy father James and the mellowed Old Jolyon respectively. And Florence Roberts demonstrates the spirit that Irene lacks as June, the most sympathetic of the lot: the jilted fiancée who becomes a successful gallerist (reincarnated in the form of Emma Amos).

It’s wryly funny throughout and pleasingly pacy, though some of the longeurs (mostly the to-ing and fro-ing around Soames and Irene’s divorce and the will-they, won’t-they when Jon and Fleur, aka Romeo and Juliet Forsyte, see each other again) could be trimmed down a touch. Max Pappenheim’s soundscape and Anna Yates’s costumes both contribute to the gradual sense of societal change.

It’s a rewarding undertaking for the pleasure of five hours of gimmick-free pure storytelling. My copy of the first volume must have been given away when it seemed unlikely I’d ever return to it – now a library hold has been placed for a possible winter reading project.

The Forsyte Saga Parts 1 and 2 is at the Park Theatre to 7 December. Book The Forsyte Saga Part 1: Irene tickets on London Theatre. Book The Forsyte Saga Part 2: Fleur tickets on London Theatre.

Photo credits: The Forsyte Saga Parts 1 and 2 (Photos by Mitzi de Margary)