When Jude St Francis cuts his wrists, the blood is thick, crimson and plentiful. As it drips on to the stage, the widescreen video flanking two sides of the set turns from crisp images of New York streets to angsty pixelation. Then a sepia dullness. The string quartet playing in the pit turns shrill and discordant.
This is not a show for the faint-hearted. Nor would you expect an adaptation of Hanya Yanagihara’s bestselling novel to be. Its 720 pages are an exercise in wretchedness, a relentless picking apart of wounds in which Jude, incessantly abused as a child, navigates an adult life in which everyone loves him, even as he hates himself. There are those who think it the best book ever written and those who find its obsessive detail, slow-burn revelation and melodramatic intrusions too much.
