Review of The Browning Version

Here is a magnificent play and screenplay, beautifully written and conceived. Much has been made of the performances of Michael Redgrave and Jean Kent, both of whom are brilliantly cast in a physical sense. Good as Redgrave and Kent both are, it is to the supporting cast that we must look for the strongest and most credible performances; Nigel Patrick is rock solid as Frank Hunter, the popular science teacher who transforms from thoughtless philanderer to decent human being, and Wilfred Hyde White is at the peak of his game as the headmaster who is self seeking, self satisfied, unfeeling and ultimately rather cruel. Michael Redgrave, for some unknown reason decided to give Crocker-Harris a rather thin dry voice which is obviously "stuck on" he also fails to show any vestige of the human being behind the persona of the school master until it is far too late, his performance is just that, a surface study of a rather frail failure, rather than a man who tries and fails. He is expected to be unpopular, but Redgrave's characterisation is, unfortunately, rather cold. Jean Kent is brilliantly cast in the physical sense, here is woman who could well be the wife of a rather lacklustre school master, but also has the magnificent womanliness, and frankly, sex appeal, to stir any man's biological chemistry. For all this, her performance as Millie Crocker-Harris is patchy, at times so very believable and at others driven by a surface petulance, a false grandeur and an unnecessary viciousness which guilds the lily of the already powerful writing. I have seen Ms Kent's work in other roles, she was well capable of more subtle work than this, which leads me to feel that the direction by Anthony Asquith may have been rather heavy handed or just plain careless in her case. Michael Redgrave has the more difficult role with which to contend, and in my honest opinion, his characterisation, flawed from the start, fails him absolutely at the vital moment of Taplow's gesture, and in spite of an effective gear change in his defiance of the headmaster and a fine delivery of the final speech, the overall performance is under the bar for an actor of Redgrave's standing.