More adaptations. More Americana. But, even though I feel that the transformed Lyttelton stage could be used for better things than sliced-up novels, I found that this version of John Irving's 637-page epic overcame my objections: partly because of its critical vision of post-war America and partly because of the wit of Mick Gordon's staging.
Having only skim-read the book, I can't comment on the fidelity of Simon Bent's adaptation. But what comes across is the strangeness of the tale in which the narrator, John Wheelwright, looks back from the vantage point of Canada in the 80s on a five foot saviour he grew up with in New Hampshire from 1953 to 1968.
His friend has a wrecked voice and a tiny body but, from the moment Meany accidentally kills John's mother with a baseball shot, the narrator accepts him at his own valuation as a second messiah. And, sure enough, Meany is credited with a virgin birth, disputes with the elders and foresees his own miraculous, expiatory death.
As a narrative device, it is dubious. But what saves it from saccharine sentimentality is that Meany is used as a means of exposing not just the hypocrisies of small town life but the larger follies of post-war America. He is quizzed by clerics and analysed by shrinks whom he bests. But, above all, he sees JFK as the posturing lecher that he was, claims foreign policy is a euphemism for relations and sees through the grisly horror of the Vietnam war. Like Lenny Bruce whom he eventually impersonates, Meany is a moralist let loose on a godless world.
As the story unfolds it offers an epic vision of America. And, even though adaptation boils this down to a series of snapshots, you get an impression of small town snobberies, of the world of nativity plays and Christmas carol adaptations, of petty religious rivalries all played out against a background of unfolding national tragedy. And even though Bent's version throws in anachronistic jokes - such as a puritanical headmaster's cry of "education, education, education" - it encapsulates a mood.
But the main pleasure comes from the fluency of Gordon's staging. He fills an initally empty space with emblems of America reinforced by Neil Austin's lighting design which wittily uses pools of light to evoke a baseball-pitch. Aidan McArdle, with his buck teeth and falsetto voice also lends Owen the right magnetic oddity, Richard Hope is effective as the credulous narrator and there is enticing support from Kelly Reilly as an inadvertent maternal victim.
I still prefers plays to cut-up novels but this at least uses faith as a form of social and political critique.
· Until June 29. Box office: 020-7452 3000.
