Filmed theatre review: The Hard Problem

Olivia Vinall and Vera Chok in The Hard Problem.

This premiere production of the first play in nine years by the distinguished Tom Stoppard marked the swansong of Hytner as director at Britain's National Theatre.

The collective oeuvre of these two is a roll call of 40 years' highlights in film, television and theatre, so a masterwork might have been anticipated.

Alas, it is not delivered.

Set at the intersection between philosophy, neuroscience, money trading and IT, this is a play that flatters audiences by making them think they are much smarter than they are - richly ironic since Stoppard recently complained in the Telegraph that audiences weren't smart enough for him.

It's an assemblage of meretricious Twitter-ready one-liners ("What is to be done with the sublime if you're proud to be a materialist?") that quickly begin to grate.

The famous problem of the title is how we define consciousness, particularly when consciousness is the only tool at our disposal.

But the play, having posed the question, shies away from examining it, instead contenting itself with a rather conventional story of a woman wrestling with age-old binaries like altruism and selfishness; maternal love and naked self-interest; materialism and spirituality; and that hoary old Mars and Venus thing.

The woman, Hilary (Vinall), starts out as a ingenuous psych student and becomes a research scientist at a brain institute, but despite the challenges (including an implausible coincidence you may see coming a mile off) that beset her, the story never takes off on a human level.

Relentlessly talky - though never hard to follow - it comes across more like a sustained dinner-party conversation between show-offs.

Hytner's direction is crisp and engaging and the main cast is superb (Molony as Hilary's egotistical tutor-lover; Calf as the overbearing founder of the institute).

Vinall, who has played Desdemona, Ophelia and Cordelia for the National, I found intensely irritating, mannered and studied as hell, though I see the London critics loved her.

But anyone hoping for the brain-fizzing enchantment of Arcadia, or the vim of Shakespeare in Love, won't find it here. Stoppard and Hytner will be best remembered for other work.

Cast: Olivia Vinall, Damien Molony, Anthony Calf
Director: Nicholas Hytner
Running time: 114 mins
Rating: M (offensive language, sexual references)
Verdict: Much less than it appears to be

- TimeOut