Jude review: Flashes of visual flair but modern Thomas Hardy tale lacks subtlety

Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure is a classic story of passion and frustration, centred on an outsider obsessed with studying at Oxford but prevented from doing so.

In Howard Brenton’s new play, loosely based on Hardy’s novel, Jude becomes Judith, a brilliant Syrian refugee who loves Greek drama yet struggles to be taken seriously. When we first see Isabella Nefar’s Judith, she’s working as a cleaner. Her knowledge and ambition startle her employer, an academic who promotes her cause, and later she gets a chance to impress a leading Oxford don (an imperious Caroline Loncq).

For Brenton, Judith’s bumpy relationship with the education system is an opportunity to reflect on questions of social mobility, as well as the stifling effects of bureaucracy and Britain’s anti-intellectualism. Yet these big subjects are handled without subtlety, and Judith’s romances with a crooked pig farmer and her own cousin fail to convince.

This is the final production of Edward Hall’s almost decade-long tenure as artistic director of Hampstead Theatre, which he’s revitalised. Despite moments of visual flair, it’s a disappointing swansong. There are flashes of satirical acuity, but the script is ponderous — short on satisfying characterisation and long on stilted discussion.

Until June 1 (020 7722 9301, hampsteadtheatre.com)