“entertaining and engaging“
Julia Newbould
Three and a half Ripleys
Ensemble Theatre
Sydney
3 May – 9 Jun 2024
Switzerland is one of the finest plays written by Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith. She has a particular skill for writing strong women. Her latest offering Julia, based on the famous Julia Gillard misogyny speech, is part of the Sydney Theatre Company’s 2024 season.
Focusing on another strong woman, Switzerland centres around the last years of The Talented Mr Ripley author Patricia Highsmith. A cranky, spiky, hard drinking, racist, Highsmith has been given a new audience through the recent Netflix series Ripley starring Andrew Scott as the eponymous antihero.
Highsmith’s first novel Strangers On A Train (1950) was such a success it was made into a Hitchcock film and gave Highsmith the money to travel and live a Ripley-like life. Her first Ripley novel came just a few years later.
I’ve been a serious Highsmith fan since seeing Strangers On A Train many years ago and followed up by reading this and all her books including the “Ripliad” – The Talented Mr Ripley (1955), Ripley Underground (1970), Ripley’s Game (1974), The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980) and Ripley Under Water (1991).
Tom Ripley, her most famous creation, is the ultimate antihero and it seems likely that to have just come from her mind, there must be some kind of darkness in Highsmith herself. No matter what crimes Ripley commits – the novels have the reader rooting for him. Her other novels and short stories also have morally questionable characters who get away with various crimes. Writing so skilfully about someone who cheats, lies and murders with no remorse does make one wonder about the mind that creates these characters. Highsmith is indeed as intriguing as her characters.
Switzerland places Highsmith in her country of choice, far away from the U.S. literary scene which she disdains with critics and authors like Vonnegut, Wolfe, and Mailer. It Is 1995 and she hasn’t long to live. The play imagines her last days and an interaction between Highsmith, played by Toni Scanlan, and Edward Ridgeway (Laurence Boxhall), an emissary of her NY publishing house, who is trying to get her to sign a contract to deliver a new Ripley novel.
Set in Highsmith’s Swiss house, which at the Ensemble, is very modest, the play rests on the talent of Scanlan and Boxhall to carry the play almost solely with dialogue.
Highsmith is very much in control of her surroundings and Scanlan is terrific at owning her scenes, dominating the conversation and intimidating her visitor. She is the decider of whether he is allowed to stay or whether he will be booted out.
Scanlan portrays Highsmith as mean and sharp-tongued but her darkness is not always taken seriously. Is it an act for Edward or is she really as nasty, and racist and as hateful as she seems?
Murray-Smith’s Highsmith is razor sharp; her tongue lashes Edward from the moment he arrives gormless and sycophantic into her life but the longer he stays the more his character builds. From the first scene where he unveils the bags of goodies Highsmith has asked from the publisher, he slowly unpacks the cans of Campbell’s mushroom soup (which she complains is not enough), the peanut butter (which she is dismayed is American and not English) and the foie gras which he pronounces wrongly, he is then berated for the item she most wanted. But after she rails against him for not bringing the item – we find that he did bring it but was only kidding, and we understand that Edward is a little more than meets the eye.
There are three “acts” in the play, divided by the actors leaving the stage. Each time Edward reappears he’s a little more confident and better dressed and his character starts to assert himself into Highsmith’s writings.
Murray-Smith’s work is full of sharp and witty dialogue which in this production is delivered a little lighter than in previous productions.
The best scenes are in the second half – characters are established, and the play becomes even more punchy and smart.
A 90-minute interval-free production is the perfect format for this story, allowing tension to build without distraction.
For all fans of Highsmith and for those who don’t know her work – the play is entertaining and engaging. Like Highsmith’s own work, Switzerland is a psychological thriller.
Julia Newbould, Theatre Now
