Viewed from one angle, Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr Ripley, about an impoverished petty fraudster turned moneyed murderer, has been the victim of its own success. Beloved by readers and authors, and adapted multiple times for screen and stage – including the starry 1999 film with Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow and the 2024 Netflix series starring Andrew Scott – it has become a legend. With the legend comes embellishment, hyperbole, simplification – until even fans of the book, rereading it today, may be surprised to find that Highsmith’s antihero is not the charismatic narcissist and confidence man of popular imagination, but in fact a rather more complex, messy, sad individual; the book’s 1950s Italian Riviera setting is as much seedy as sparkling.
Sydney Theatre Company’s new production sits somewhere between Highsmith’s original and the legend, with playwright Joanna Murray-Smith and director Sarah Goodes in conversation with both and beholden to neither. Instead they ruthlessly do what they must to produce an entertaining and pacy piece of theatre for a contemporary audience.
