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Fatal Attraction, Theatre Royal Brighton review: lacks the psychological hinterland of the film

Oliver Farnworth and Kym Marsh in Fatal Attraction - ©Tristram Kenton
Oliver Farnworth and Kym Marsh in Fatal Attraction - ©Tristram Kenton

Though a Hollywood hot property – a top-grossing cultural phenomenon in 1987 – Fatal Attraction drew a less enamoured critical reaction with its eventual stage incarnation, ranging from lukewarm approval to icy disdain.

The Telegraph’s reviewer spoke for many at the 2014 world premiere in London in asking the obvious: “You may wonder...why you should pay top whack for West End tickets when the film is readily available on DVD for a few quid?”

That query is no less applicable to this new touring production, directed by Loveday Ingram. The show may not charge hefty West End prices but it now has to compete with the cheap, readily available streaming version.

Who are you more likely to want to watch? Smooth Michael Douglas as Dan Gallagher, the married New York lawyer who risks a casual hook-up with Glenn Close’s foxy publishing editor Alex Forrester, then faces escalating vengeful consequences after he spurns more contact? Or much lesser known theatre regular Oliver Farnworth, cast opposite former Hear’Say band-member turned Coronation Street stalwart Kym Marsh as his nemesis?

On paper, it’s no contest. How, then, to explain the packed house at the Theatre Royal Brighton? No doubt there’s residual devotion to the film, the curiosity value of seeing it (and maybe Marsh) in the flesh and the reassurance of a known commodity. But isn’t it because the basic lusty premise grips, inviting us to contemplate just how horribly wrong things can go when we stray from nominal domestic bliss to spice things up?

Ingram utilises a script by original screenwriter James Dearden that alters the film’s blood-bath ending, reverting to an initial idea to shift sympathy towards the demonic, self-destructive femme fatale. It’s not much of an improvement, and, on stage, several of the film’s more memorable moments get lost or lose impact.

Kym Marsh as foxy publishing editor Alex Forrester in Fatal Attraction at the Theatre Royal Brighton - ©Tristram Kenton
Kym Marsh as foxy publishing editor Alex Forrester in Fatal Attraction at the Theatre Royal Brighton - ©Tristram Kenton

There’s no unbridled carry-on amid kitchen-sink crockery, for instance, though Farnworth is a bit of a dish, and - pawing each other, kissing, partially disrobing and tumbling into bed – the pair catch the way flirty composure yields to mad abandon. Marsh flips nicely from discomfiting protestations of devotion to unhinged fury.

The famous horror flick-esque sequence in the film, cutting between Dan’s daughter running towards the rabbit hutch in their new country pile and the grim revelation in a saucepan – which brought the phrase “bunny boiler” into the lexicon – is rendered in remarkably prosaic style, all over in a flash. Much of the dialogue is pretty flat and the characterisation thin – the duo lack a detailed psychological hinterland.

But nit-picking like this only gets you so far: the piece does, all the same, grapple boldly with unstable relations between the sexes. Dan is shifty and grasping, yet tries to do the decent thing at points. Is he unfairly punished? Alex is at once pathologically inclined and evidently a victim as well. What are the rules? How do you negotiate them? Those questions bubbled away in the ever-more feminist 1980s. In the age of Tinder, with conventional relationship aspirations lying cheek by jowl with a digital realm of abundant, often anonymised, sexual prospects and questions of consent possibly more vexed than ever, this production – for all its flaws – is bound to appeal to many. Inferior to the film, the allure of Fatal Attraction on stage is a weak one, and yet it beckons all the same.

Tours to May 7. Tickets: fatalattractionplay.com