“The Misanthrope” at the Lyttelton, National Theatre
Neil Dowden on the South Bank
★★★☆☆
27 June 2026
Martin Crimp is evidently fascinated by Molière’s classic satirical comedy The Misanthrope. His 1996 contemporary media-celebrity take on the play for the Young Vic featured the titular anti-hero as a playwright in love with a glamorous actress. It was revived and revised with suitably starry casting in New York in 1999 with Roger Rees and Uma Thurman, then in the West End in 2009 with Damian Lewis and Keira Knightley. But that was a “version” of the original play, while for Crimp’s new reimagining of The Misanthrope for the National Theatre his name comes first as the author “after” Molière. It has been updated to the digital age with a gender-swapped protagonist (played by Sandra Oh) railing against cancel culture.
Photo credit: Marc Brenner.
Alceste is now Alice, a successful novelist who is in danger of being stripped of a forthcoming literary prize on account of her outspoken and controversial comments (though we never hear exactly what these are). She also attacks her loyal friend and confidant John, a playwright, for flattering and embracing an artist at a party without even knowing her work. He tries to warn her that her unwillingness to conform to social conventions will see her career suffer. But Alice refuses to compromise on what she regards as dishonesty, hypocrisy, insincerity, and shallowness in modern society.
When an influencer fan of Alice’s and wannabe writer Esmée interrupts their private conversation, Alice puts her down with a withering – if accurate – critique of her pretentious and hackneyed prose despite John’s efforts to restrain her. Esmée’s subsequent claims on social media that Alice has gaslighted her go viral.
But Alice’s superior standards do not extend to her younger lover, the self-regarding and recovering alcoholic film actor Stefan, who gives more attention to his agent and publicist than commitment to her. When his former wife Elaine, a high-powered conductor, persuades Alice that Stefan is unfaithful to her, Alice gives him an ultimatum to go off-grid.
Sandra Oh and Paul Chahidi.
Photo credit: Marc Brenner.
Molière’s original play is clearly used here as a springboard for Crimp to launch into a number of hot-button topics today such as online abuse and image projection, political correctness and self-censorship, the dangerous power of tech bros. But the dive isn’t very deep. Essentially it still revolves around an ambivalent figure who may be a truth-telling scourge of debased civilization, or a perpetually enraged anti-social outsider. With the actors occasionally breaking the fourth wall, Crimp has added some theatrical in-jokes – including ones about audiences always standing to applaud on opening night and classic plays staged in glass boxes – and there is much fun here especially in the sharply written earlier scenes. But the targets are rather scattergun later as the writing becomes somewhat unfocused.
The production by the National Theatre’s artistic director Indhu Rubasingham captures the serious undertow beneath the witticisms. Robert Jones’s elegant neoclassical set design depicting a stylish retro hotel is a nod to The Misanthrope’s seventeenth-century origins. At the end these trappings are stripped away in a coup de théâtre aided by Tim Lutkin’s stunning candle and chandelier lighting that shifts the tone from realism to expressionism as Alice exits from a fancy dress party.
Best known here for playing the eponymous lead in television sensation Killing Eve, Canadian actor Oh cuts a dapper figure in a trouser suit as sharp as Alice’s barbs in her UK stage debut. She is always watchable and retains our sympathy for her character even when she seems unnecessarily cruel or cynical, as we sense her obsession with being frank comes out of an emotional need.
Paul Chahidi gives a delightfully comic and warm performance as her best friend John who is alternately frustrated and concerned at her waywardness. Tom Mison is also amusing as the charmingly vain and not to be trusted Stefan, while Jemima Rooper is the formidably angry Elaine. Imogen Elliott is pitch perfect as the passively aggressive Esmée, while there is good support from Abigail Cruttenden as a career-controlling agent, Rina Fatania as an image-conscious publicist, and Freddie MacBruce as a hacker who can manipulate the truth.
