The Forsyte Saga at Park Theatre

Like many people my age, The Forsyte Saga burst into my life with the late 60s serialisation on BBC 1 staring, amongst others, Eric Porter, Nyree Dawn Porter and Susan Hampshire. It made a big impression then and that was reinforced with another good adaptation on BBC Radio in 2017. I love the sweep of the drama over generations and the way that the many characters interact.

So when Park Theatre put on a version I was obviously interested.

There was a slight complication in that the saga was told over two separate plays, Part 1: Irene and Part 2: Fleur. It made sense, given the travel time to Finsbury Park, to see them on the same day which meant a Thursday or a Saturday and it was Thursday that won that battle.

The Forsyte Saga was selling very well limiting my options further and I settled for a seat in the Circle and got E12 for both performances. For some reason Part 1 cost £31.5 and Part 2 was £35.55.

First I had to get there and find somewhere for lunch, both of which proved to be very easy; National Rail and Victoria Line did the first part and Frame did the second. Frame was newish to the area and is now my designated pre-theatre restaurant for Park Theatre.

The view of the stage from my seat was good, i.e. I could easily see all of it.

The set at the start was promising too with just four chairs on stage, and that was about as far as it got. The story worked well on radio so there was no reason for it not to work well on a stage with very few props.

Depending on how you look at it (and I wish that I hadn't looked!), the story of the Forsytes is 3, 5 or 11 books, and the famous TV series was 26 episodes so a five hour adaptation had to leave an awful lot uncovered and unsaid. 

It did that by focussing on two characters, Irene and Fleur. These are from two generations with Fleur being Irene's step daughter (from her first husband, Soames', second marriage). That curtailed both the length and breadth of the story but you would only know that if you had heard the full story before, as two plays these were complete in themselves.

That story was a simple(!) one of a rich family with lots of members living the lives expected of them (country houses, operas, etc.) with those lives complicated by relationships.

I do now know if it was a deliberate feature of the adaptation or me completely misreading it but I felt that Soames came out of this quite well while both Irene and Fleur (particularly Fleur) came across as a bit flighty and fickle. Of course there was a major incident (no spoilers) which goes against this narrative but that was not dwelt on greatly and, while not forgiving Soames at all, was over a century ago when things were very different (it only became illegal in 1991).

With a large family and a modestly sized cast many actors played several roles and that worked very well, as it always does with good actors. Only checking the cast list now I realise that I had seen several of them on stage before, e.g. Flora Spencer-Longhurst (Fleur) was in The Real Thing at Rose Theatre and Nigel Hastings (James and Jo) was in  And Then Come the Nightjars  at Theatre503. Also Michael Lumsden (six roles) has been in The Archers for 25 years and it is always nice to catch one of them live.

The strength of the play was in its convoluted story and this was significantly enhanced by the very clever staging, particularly the intricate movement that let the story move from scene to scene smoothly to create a continuous narrative.

It is easy to say that I cannot find fault, not even the littlest, with The Forsyte Saga but it was far more than just faultless, it was excellent theatre and very easy to recommend to any one who likes theatre or stories.