Tobias Menzies stars as a man accused of a horrible crime in The Hunt (photo by Teddy Wolff)
THE HUNT
St. Ann’s Warehouse
45 Water St.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 24, $64-$84
718-254-8779
stannswarehouse.org
In 2012, St. Ann’s Warehouse presented the US premiere of Grzegorz Jarzyna’s mesmerizing adaptation of Thomas Vinterberg and Tobias Lindholm’s 1998 Dogme 95 film, Festen (The Celebration), about a birthday party at which the adult son of the honoree suddenly accuses his father of having sexually abused him and his twin sister when they were children.
That same year, Danish writer-director Vinterberg released his terrifying Oscar-nominated drama Jagten (The Hunt), in which Mads Mikkelsen stars as a kindergarten teacher falsely accused of sexually abusing a six-year-old student in a small, tight-knit town.
Writer David Farr and director Rupert Goold’s adaptation of The Hunt for the Almeida Theatre is now having its US premiere at St. Ann’s; it’s a haunting tale of hunters and their prey.
Tobias Menzies makes a dazzling US stage debut as Lucas Bruun, a forty-year-old educator who is teaching at the Sunbeam Infants School in an isolated village in Northern Denmark after his previous employer closed. He has separated from his wife, Susanne, and is frustrated that he is not getting enough time to spend with their sixteen-year-old son, Marcus (Raphael Casey).
A teacher (Tobias Menzies) is given a surprise present by one of his students (Aerina DeBoer) in The Hunt (photo by Teddy Wolff)
After a special event, his favorite student, five-year-old Clara Kallstrom (alternately played by Aerina DeBoer or Kay Winard), tells school head Hilde (Lolita Chakrabarti) that Lucas exposed himself to her, which is not true. Soon the entire town, including Clara’s parents, Mikala (MyAnna Buring) and Theo (Alex Hassell), who are Lucas’s closest friends, has turned against him, branding him a pariah.
Curiously, as his world crumbles around him, the fiercely private Lucas doesn’t stand up for himself, never proclaiming his innocence, even though we saw the encounter in question and know he did not do anything wrong. He begs the school and Clara’s parents to let him talk to the girl in order to straighten everything out, but no one wants him near her or the school. Even his buddies in the Men of the Lodge, a group of hunters who love singing, shooting, and boozing it up, immediately ostracize him, making him the hunted. The only support he receives is from his dog, Max, and Marcus, who shows up unexpectedly at his doorstep.
“Talking to you is like scaling a fucking castle wall. You know that?” Mikala tells him.
But he’s not about to let anyone in, even with his life in danger.
The Hunt takes place on Es Devlin’s fascinating set, a house-shaped cube that switches from transparent to opaque in a flash; it rests on a turntable, so it occasionally spins, and there is a trapdoor so characters can appear and disappear. Neil Austin’s lighting includes neon lines on the floor, ceiling, and wall and in and on the cube itself, while Adam Cork’s sound is highlighted by songbirds who represent the freedom that is just out of Lucas’s reach.
Despite the plentiful open space, the cube gives the show a claustrophobic feeling, whether it’s being used as a church or the men’s lodge, stuffed with people, or for a lone antlered forest creature signaling potential doom.
Es Devlin’s set is a character unto itself in US premiere of Almeida production at St. Ann’s (photo by Teddy Wolff)
Ritual and social convention hover over the narrative. The show opens with Hilde directly addressing the audience, introducing the children’s harvest festival play. “Welcome, everyone. It’s lovely to see so many familiar faces,” she says. “We are a small community. The happiness of our children is everything. Our hopes and dreams rest in these tiny souls. And to spend each day with them is a kind of heaven.”
In the next scene, the Men of the Lodge are in bathing suits, going for a manly swim, belting out, “Oh, eight men they go swimming / In the water oh so cold / The eight men they are hunters / The eight men they are bold / The eight men they are heroes / They never will grow old / Their bodies made of iron / Their hearts are made of gold / The hunters undefeated / Are mighty to behold. They dance in unison to Kel Matsena’s testosterone-filled choreography, which takes a darker path as Christmas approaches.
Emmy winner Menzies, best known in America for his roles on Outlander and The Crown, is riveting as Lucas, a highly principled man who has too much faith in others. He remains soft-spoken even as his freedom is being stolen. Buring and Hassell excel as Lucas’s best friends, who are not sure what or whom to believe. The rest of the ensemble is strong, including Chakrabarti as the school head whose job it is to protect the children, Casey as the son who has faith in his father, Howard Ward as a school administrator and the local pastor, Rumi C. Jean-Louis or Christopher Riley as Clara’s school pal Peter, and Adrian Der Gregorian, Ali Goldsmith, Shaquille Jack, Danny Kirrane, and Jonathan Savage as the other Men of the Lodge.
Farr (Night Manager, The Homecoming) and Goold (Patriots, Ink) occasionally stray from the film’s story, with uneven results; a few scenes are awkward, but they right the ship for a poignant finale.
At two points, characters suddenly appear at the back of the audience and make their way to the stage, as if any one of us could be them. Would we be the accused, the accuser, or the townspeople who have to look deep inside themselves? None will like what they find.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]