Reviews are coming in for the English language premiere of Farewell Mister Haffmann at the Ustinov in Bath Theatre Royal.
Jean-Philippe Daguerre’s multi-award winning French play Adieu Monsieur Haffman is translated by Jeremy Sams and features direction by Lindsay Posner.
This gripping wartime drama set in Nazi occupied Paris provides an entertaining and moving exploration of individual and collective moral dilemmas. In France the play won four Molière Awards including Best New Play and has become one of its the longest running plays.
The UK production stars Nigel Lindsay – fresh from the hugely acclaimed The Lehman Trilogy in the West End – alongside stage and screen star Lisa Dillon (Cranford, Bright Young Things); Olivier Award nominee Josefina Gabrielle (Oklahoma!); Alexander Hanson (The Sound of Music, Sunset Boulevard, Jesus Christ Superstar), and Peaky Blinders’ Ciaran Owens.
The creative team includes Set and Costume Designer Paul Wills; Lighting Designer Peter Mumford; Sound Designer & Composer Giles Thomas; and, Casting Director Serena Hill. A West End transfer is yet to be announced, however this production is sure to live on elsewhere.
Farewell Mister Haffmann runs at the Ustinov in Bath Theatre Royal to 23 September 2023.
More reviews will be added when published
Farewell Mister Haffmann reviews
"It is gripping, surprising, resonant yet accessible"
"Lindsay Posner’s British premiere is so beautifully acted. Nigel Lindsay has a straight-backed yet lightly worn dignity as the jewellery-shop owner Joseph Haffmann."
"Jeremy Sams’s artful adaptation has characters speak in a spare but contemporary manner that makes this feel unsettlingly vivid."
"Posner’s direction, unobtrusively acute once it all gets going, appears oddly old-fashioned at first as the characters move in silent blackouts from one side of Paul Wills’s sparely evocative set to another. You fear an oddly dated potboiler."
"The first ten minutes need your patience; the next 80 reward it royally. "
"Witty and sharply focused"
"Handling its weighty subject matter with humour and sensitivity, this award-winning 2016 play from French author Jean-Philippe Daguerre is equal parts farce and tense, wartime thriller."
"This English-language translation by Jeremy Sams is witty and sharply focused, cutting straight to the essentials of each scene. Director Lindsay Posner leans into the brisk pace, whizzing through a succession of short vignettes that establish the characters and their tricky dynamics. Touching, emotionally charged beats keep the production just the right side of farce; there’s a real sense of the life-and-death stakes behind the scenes of the quirky domestic drama that we’re focused on. Giles Thomas’ attention-grabbing sound design bookends scenes with ambiguous, percussive noises."
