It is awfully easy to be hard boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.
– Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Fiesta (The Sun Also Rises) is a distilled and spare adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway novel, The Sun Also Rises. Adapted and directed by Alex Helfrect, the play is set in 1920s Paris and Pamplona and follows the stoic – and often drunk – Jake Barnes, an American journalist and bullfighting aficionado, as he is forced to re-examine the wounds and memories from his time served during WW1.
It’s been awhile since I read The Sun Also Rises, but this play feels true to the spirit of the book. In particular, the language is economic and punchy. Thank you! I thoroughly enjoyed attending last night’s performance and reckon that fans of Hemingway (and theatre goers in general) should find it to be a more than satisfactory and compelling play.
Set design (Rachel Noel) is as restrained yet effective as the dialogue with key elements of the story honed in upon with thoughtful precision. No spoilers though: go see this play.
The small ensemble of actors gives engaging performances. Josie Taylor is especially potent in her role as the unabashed Lady Brett Ashley who seeks out her old lover Jake (solidly played by Gideon Turner) after seven years silence and brings with her a storm of passion and devastating consequence for Jake’s novelist buddy Robert Cohn (Jye Frasca) and the pompous yet naïve bullfighter Pedro Romero (Jack Holden). Some of the accents sound a bit uncertain, affected and wobbly here and there throughout the play – but that’s my only real criticism. And it’s a minor one.
Backing up and sometimes taking part in the action on stage is jazz band, Trio Farouche, who lay down a throbbing and dynamic soundtrack for the show. Indeed, they’d be a swell band to see on their own.
Fiesta (The Sun Also Rises) is on now until 2 March at Trafalgar Studio 2, Whitehall, SW1A 2DY. Find out more at FiestaWestEnd.com.
