Extraordinary how responsive Festen is to different interpretations. Thomas Vinterberg's original 1998 Dogme film had the feel of docu-drama. A recent Polish stage version turned the story into doom-laden Shakespearean tragedy. Now David Eldridge's adaptation heightens the work's element of black comedy.
The subject of childhood sexual abuse is obviously no laughing matter; and we are suitably appalled as a Danish patriarch is accused by his son, at a 60th birthday party, of raping him and his late sister. But both Rufus Norris's production and Eldridge's text show there is something grotesque about the guests' reaction. The accusation is greeted with awkward silence. A guest remarks that the revelations are not helping his depression.
The brilliance of this version lies in the tension between the decorousness of the occasion and the dire nature of the revelations; and the horror is even more acute because of the heightened absurdity. Jane Asher, impeccable as the patriach's grimly smiling wife, pays tribute to her "wonderful granddaughter" only to swat her away like a fly. And one watches with incredulity as Robert Pugh, the disgraced father, turns up the next morning to tell his son, Christian, "well fought, my boy."
But the beauty of Norris's production is that it implies familial disintegration from the outset. The first sound we hear is that of a child's unnerving laughter. Jonny Lee Miller's excellent Christian is initially seen in brooding solitude like a man tense with expectation.
Above all, Norris reminds us this is a work about social hypocrisy. It offers us a formal celebration in which no one stands up to speak without first tapping their glass: what it uncovers is a world of paternal abuse, wifely complicity and racism. Admirably designed by Ian MacNeil and flawlessly acted, it suggests not merely that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark but that pomp and ceremony are universally a mask for guilt.
· Until May 1. Box office: 020-7359 4404.
