Produced by Ashley Cook for Troupe in association with Park Theatre
Directed by Josh Roche
Designed by Anna Yates
Lighting Design by Alex Musgrave
Sound Design and Composition by Max Pappenheim
Movement Direction by Patrice Bowler
‘Now I know what Soames did, what my father did,
I will never be able to not know it.’
The Park Theatre October-December 2024
London, 1886. Wealthy solicitor Soames Forsyte is a man of property, and his beautiful wife Irene is his most prized possession. When he commissions an architect to build him a house in which to keep her, the cracks in their marriage finally begin to show, until something happens so shocking that it tears the Forsyte family apart. Years later, Soames’ daughter Fleur is haunted by the family secret when history begins to repeat itself…
John Galsworthy’s classic story The Forsyte Saga (famously adapted for television and recently for BBC Radio 4) is newly dramatized for the stage in two parts by Shaun McKenna and Lin Coghlan, bringing the unheard female voices to the fore for the first time. Spanning 40 years from the last gasp of the Victorian age to the beginning of the roaring 1920s, this is an epic tale of sex, money and power.
Joseph Millson as Soames
Flora Spencer-Longhurst as Fleur
Fiona Hampton as Irene
Andy Rush as Bosinney, Jon and Polteed
Jamie Wilkes as Jo, Policeman and Michael
Florence Roberts as June, Annette and Anne
Emma Amos as Emily, Juley, Holly and June
Nigel Hastings as James and Jo
Michael Lumsden as Old Jolyon, Within, Riggs, Profound and Blade
The two parts of The Forsyte Saga are separate and intended to be seen sequentially. However, each part constitutes a complete theatre-going experience on its own.
“The Forsyte Saga is a triumph … a joyous exercise in shared dramatic storytelling… a witty and highly enjoyable duo of plays that create the stage equivalent of a box-set binge, while making serious points about power, values and sexual politics across a period of intense social change… Nimble work across the cast draws out the stories’ moral ambiguities and humanity. And what the show demonstrates above all is how everyone is circumscribed by the society they inhabit. A triumph for the Park Theatre. ”
— Financial Times
“McKenna and Coghlan dig deeply and satisfyingly into the complex characters’ motivations …. an atmosphere of hushed expectation, all furtive assignations and formal conversations shattered by explosive flashes of emotion, which flare and fade like ignited matches. ”
— The Stage
“Dashingly counterintuitive... This story so stuffed with stuff is set on an almost bare stage: a few chairs in front of a full-length curtain behind which is a brick wall; puffs of fog for a catastrophic evening in the capital. Leaps of place and era are conjured intangibly. ... The atmosphere is charged but nothing is skimped. It feels sumptuous, panoramic, intense, amusing: vividly of its time yet arrestingly modern in its understanding of the games we play. ”
— The Observer
“Shaun McKenna and Lin Coghlan’s adaptations dish out gripping narratives. And yet in the way the staging images the imagination it is wondrously theatrical… pretty much faultless.... The characters are fully fleshed, each treated as nuanced individuals with their best and worst traits on full display, without ever slipping into the black and white binaries of good and evil. ”
— The Times
“Mckenna and Coghlan discover rivers of humour throughout. Either one of the plays would make for a satisfying evening of theatre; taken together, they are nothing short of a triumph.”
— thereviewshub.com
“The script is sharp, witty, comedic and enticing… irresistibly brooding and masterfully paced”
— WhatsOnStage.com
“What a story it is, located four-square within its late 19th and early 20th century sensibilities but freighted with firecrackers that explode with a 21st century relevance that bring gasps of surprise about how things once were, but also wry smiles and grimaces at how little things have changed really. I was genuinely sad once it ended, the same kind of feeling you get when you’ve just binge watched a new TV series, fallen in love with it and then found out there won’t be another season. ”
