Viewed from one angle, Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr Ripley, about an impoverished petty fraudster turned moneyed murderer, has been the victim of its own success. Beloved by readers and authors, and adapted multiple times for screen and stage – including the starry 1999 film with Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow and the 2024 Netflix series starring Andrew Scott – it has become a legend. With the legend comes embellishment, hyperbole, simplification – until even fans of the book, rereading it today, may be surprised to find that Highsmith’s antihero is not the charismatic narcissist and confidence man of popular imagination, but in fact a rather more complex, messy, sad individual; the book’s 1950s Italian Riviera setting is as much seedy as sparkling.
Sydney Theatre Company’s new production sits somewhere between Highsmith’s original and the legend, with playwright Joanna Murray-Smith and director Sarah Goodes in conversation with both and beholden to neither. Instead they ruthlessly do what they must to produce an entertaining and pacy piece of theatre for a contemporary audience.
The bones of the story remain: Tom Ripley (played here by Will McDonald, of Heartbreak High and Home and Away fame) is plucked from a life of low-level grifting by a wealthy businessman, Herbert Greenleaf (Andrew McFarlane), who commissions him for a well-paid trip to the Italian Riviera to extricate his indolent son Dickie (Raj Labade). Once there, Tom tries – and ultimately fails – to ingratiate himself with Dickie and his girlfriend Marge (Claude Scott-Mitchell), while falling under the spell of not only his charismatic host but also his lifestyle of easy luxury and leisure.
It is surely no great spoiler at this stage in the novel’s life to say that Tom murders Dickie and assumes his identity. This sets off the game of cat and mouse that is the grist of Highsmith’s often excruciatingly suspenseful thriller, as Tom hops around picturesque European cities – and between identities – to avoid the police but also Dickie’s friends and family.
Murray-Smith’s adaptation is framed through the narration of an older and more sophisticated Tom Ripley who, in the opening scene – set on an imposing, minimalist set under noirish lighting – tells us this is the story of a game played against the odds. The play then unfolds as if through his imagination, the blank set populated with furnishing and props and lit with roving spotlights – all with a level of artificiality that suggests we might be watching a 50s studio movie being made.
Murray-Smith and Goodes previously collaborated on STC’s excellent 2014 psychological drama about Highsmith, Switzerland, and here you can feel both of them in their comfort zone, turning out a stylish thriller with a sense of humour. The cast is young – faithfully to Highsmith’s novel, where the key characters are mid-20s – beautiful and beautifully dressed; the design is swishy and dramatic; the soundtrack lends a contemporary edginess to what might have been a more conventional period drama, with memorable dance breaks set to an electro club banger and the Violent Femmes’ nervy punk cut Add It Up.
In adapting the 250-page novel for a two-hour staging, Murray-Smith makes confident choices, expanding the role of Dickie’s chum Freddie Miles (Faisal Hamza) and recasting Highsmith’s Marge, who is largely unlikeable, as a far more astute opponent of Tom’s. (This in turn leads to the play’s boldest choice, which shouldn’t be spoiled.)
The homoeroticism of the book is dialled up, and across the board subtext is made explicit, with Murray-Smith inventing narration and dialogue so that Tom and others can spell out exactly what they think and what this story is about. There are echoes of Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film in her dramatisation, including one early scene in which Tom impersonates Dickie’s father.
Goodes and her design team go big, crafting vivid set pieces and images, and leaning into comedy and crowd-pleasing moments – including the aforementioned Violent Femmes dance break, in which Ripley blows off sexually frustrated steam. It mostly works, though there are moments where comedy and physical mugging undercut the carefully built tension of a scene.
So much of any Ripley retelling rests on the actor at its centre, and McDonald – doing double duty as narrator and protagonist – does an admirable job carrying that weight. He’s most confident in the narcissistic end of Ripley’s spectrum, but also successfully conveys the more abject aspects of the character: his sensitivity and desperation to be loved, his foundation of self-loathing, his off-putting – even repellant – obsequiousness with Dickie. He persuasively transforms from bland, forgettable cipher to charismatic leading man as required – while not having the talent for impersonation that an actor like Matt Damon or Andrew Scott has.
Every aspect of this production feels – like Highsmith’s Ripley himself – highly capable; doing what it must, when it must, to survive and succeed. It does not reveal new aspects of the character or novel, but rather contributes to the conversation and the legend around them, and is likely to convert uninitiated audiences into admirers of this wily antihero. Ripley himself might well be thrilled.
The Talented Mr Ripley is on at Sydney Theatre Company’s Roslyn Packer Theatre until 28 September and tours to Arts Centre Melbourne from 28 October to 23 November
