A Little Life
Harold Pinter Theatre | ★★★✩✩

As a measure of how faithful this Ivo van Hove-directed adaptation is of Hanya Yanagihara’s famous Booker-nominated novel, you could do worse than check if the conflict begat by the original has migrated from the page to the stage.

Is this torture porn dressed up as art? Or does the fathom-deep suffering experienced by this work’s central character, Jude, a New York public prosecutor (admirably underplayed by James Norton with an inscrutable charisma), necessarily expose what the word “abuse” actually means when inserted into newspaper headlines.

James Norton (Jude), Luke Thompson (Willem). by Jan Versweyveld

James Norton and Luke Thompson (Jan Versweyveld)

And so yes, on that level this show is indeed faithful to the original. There will be admirers and haters, though if the bestseller is anything to go by, plus the already extended West End run, there are many more fans than detractors.

Hove’s typically stylish stage production, which is located and bookended with slow-mo film projections of wealthy New York streets, also replicates the sense of mystery surrounding Jude’s past.

Not even his college friends know what causes his sudden bouts of pain, or why he moves with a limp and sometimes uses a wheelchair.

One of the friends is JB (Omari Douglas), an artist for whom the group of friends is a subject to be painted. Willem (Luke Thompson) is an actor and Malcolm (Zach Wyatt) an architect.

These are beautifully acted beautiful people with everything going for them but for the question mark hanging over Jude. It takes nearly all the production’s four hours for that punctuation to be answered fully, though rarely does time drag.

Nathalie Armin (Ana), James Norton (Jude). Image by Jan Versweyveld

Nathalie Armin and James Norton (Jan Versweyveld)

Jude’s backstory emerges via his inner life accompanying him wherever he goes. There is his imagined former counsellor Ana (Nathalie Armin), who is constantly telling him to open up to his friends about his past. It is the only way he can survive it.

There are also regular appearances by Father Luke, played by Elliott Cowan as a postmodern priest, more hipster than cassock. As a foundling Jude was placed, we learn, into Father Luke’s care who then made Jude available to fellow paedophiles from the time when the child was about the age of five.

It is the legacy of that abuse which the piece explores — from the sadistic self-destructive sexual liaisons in Jude’s adult life to the self-loathing, a condition from which he can only find release through self-harm. The cutting with razor blades is graphic, as is the sexual violence.

All this poses yet more questions: how much pain can one little life take before life is no longer worth living? How much can we the audience see without turning away?
It is fine to write with an unflinching gaze about a barbaric social phenomenon.

But, for my part, dwelling on sexual and physical sadism to this extent can only be justified if the case study is real and the events depicted amount to testimony. The brutality here is sometimes Gestapo level.

Zubin Varla (Harold), James Norton (Jude), Elliot Cowan (Brother Luke), Nathalie Armin (Ana). Pic by Jan Versweyveld

Zubin Varla, James Norton, Elliot Cowan and Nathalie Armin (Jan Versweyveld)

The risk in using fiction to illustrate real-life atrocity is that you end up with exploitation. As a Jew, I see such works as The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and other Holocaust fictions as exploitative. I wonder if people who have suffered abuse see A Little Life in a similar way.

There are positives, some of which may not have been intended. The current preoccupation with using terms such as abuse and trauma to describe behaviours that are merely insensitive is ruthlessly exposed here.

You leave with the sense of having survived something. Prepare for an ordeal rather than an entertainment.