At its best it is transfixing. At its worst it is like a blind date between several episodes of Friends and the Oberammergau passion play. A Little Life: a host of questions. I have rarely been quizzed with such intensity about a play. James Norton’s starring role, as Jude, is one of the reasons. Well: he is excellent. Yet curiosity is also driven by people’s ardent attachment to Hanya Yanagihara’s bestselling novel, published in 2015. Is Ivo van Hove’s production a betrayal?
The answer to that is no. The demonstration of how early damage can stamp itself into someone’s DNA – how someone abused as a child is likely to turn on himself, unable to trust, unable to talk – is forcefully dramatised. Violence inflicted by monks and others is remorselessly displayed: burning, lashings with a belt, rapes. The emotional fervour of Jude’s college friends, doctor, analyst and adoptive father is abundantly evident, as it was in Edinburgh last summer, where the play was performed, in Dutch, with a different cast. The largeness (700 pages translates to nearly four hours) of the undertaking is extraordinary; the acting is terrific. Still, this leaves room for scepticism about the essence of book and adaptation; about the reverence with which both friendship and pain are treated – as if neither could be susceptible to inquiry.
