BWW Reviews: SWITZERLAND turns the tables on the reclusive mystery writer.

Saturday 8 November 2014, 8pm, The Drama theatre, Sydney Opera House NSW

Sydney Theatre Company's latest offering, SWITZERLAND, by Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith draws on the life of Texan native Patricia Highsmith, famous for writing psychological thrillers with her most famous character being Tom Ripley, to create an insight into the writer's reclusive life and place her in a mystery of her own. For this one act, 95 minute play, Sarah Peirse as Patricia, and Eamon Farren as Edward, keep the audience on enthralled with a fine balance of suspense, satire and humour.

The stage is set in Highsmith's living room in her house in the Swiss Alps. Pistols, knives and swords along with other artwork and artefacts adorn the walls, a roaring fire helps set the location as the cold of Switzerland, a roll top desk housing a typewriter and piles of books and papers confirm that the inhabitant is a writer, the coffee table holds a stack of notebooks, a spiral staircase winds up to an unseen second floor and a bookcase lined corridor provides the access to the rest of the house.

Murray-Smith's writing captures the reclusive writer well and Peirse's performance ensures that the audience need not have prior knowledge of Highsmith's eccentricities to quickly understand that the Patricia is a bitter, twisted, horrid, resentful, chain smoking, alcoholic, cat (and snail) woman, that hates everyone with a quick wit and unusual and unexpected hobbies and passions. She draws on facts of Highsmith's life to weave in facts with the fiction to blur the lines of where the biography finishes and Murray-Smith's creation starts. The dialogue is clever and fast, in keeping with Highsmith's own style and draws on a number of cultural references. Peirse handles the dry Texan with a touch of New Yorker creating a distinctive accent well and her physicality is congruent with Highsmith's age and the stoop she developed in her later years.

Farren's Edward takes the play from being purely about Highsmith to providing the mystery and an avenue to explore Highsmith's complexity and how she created her most famous character, Tom Ripley. Farren, as the unwanted houseguest plays the part of a nervous young publisher's assistant, sent to get a commitment for Highsmith's next book well with the right level of wide eyed adoration of the writer he has been sent to persuade and the determination of youth to not take no for an answer. Edward initially provides a contrast to Patricia's venom and cynicism through his optimism and respect for her talent and also serves to set the time of the piece as the relatively recent, and highlights how long it has been since Patricia was in New York and that it is no longer the same place she remembers and dislikes. Edward's observations of current day New York also provides an interesting social commentary.

Nick Schlieper's lighting and Steve Francis' sound add to the mood and create the suspense necessary and Sarah Goodes (director) has utilised Michael Scot-Mitchell's large and detailed set to its full potential.

SWITZERLAND is a must for any fans of Highsmith's writing along, those that like a good mystery and anyone that enjoys a good thought provoking piece of fast paced intelligent theatre.

SWITZERLAND

Sydney Theatre Company

3 November 2014 - 20 December 2014

Drama Theatre,

Sydney Opera House

Photos: Brett Boardman

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