Did London Critics Purr Over Holly Hunter in By The Bog of Cats?

Holly Hunter has come to the West End in Marina Carr's By The Bog of Cats, which she previously appeared in at the San José Repertory Theatre in the fall of 2001. The story is loosely based on Medea, but resets the tale in the mysterious bogs of Ireland. Did critics think this story of love and revenge, which opened at the Wyndhams Theatre on December 1, was a tragedy or triumph?

Here is a sampling of what they had to say:

Benedict Nightingale of The London Times: "Hester Swane--note the avian name--provides a good opportunity for Holly Hunter to demonstrate that she belongs on the stage as well as on the screen. But it's one the Hollywood star takes somewhat fitfully. It's not her fault she's slight of build, thin of voice and not wholly at home with the accent. And there are times when her pinched, pale face toughens and she finds a scrawny intensity in herself… She hasn't the balefulness to generate the necessary tension or the ferocity to make a bloody ending plausible. Maybe she isn't wholly helped by the tone of Carr's play, which blends Celtic twilight, Grand Guignol and high comedy… More darkness and pain, not to mention terror and pity, are needed. To add to the play's abundant imagery, Holly Hunter was asked to create a mountain--and came up with a hill."

Nicholas de Jongh of The Evening Standard: "Hunter plays a contemporary version of Euripides' proud heroine, fortyish Hester Swane, a mother driven by several varieties of despair to murder her own flesh and blood. She emerges from this grisly ordeal with colours flying and a flair for telling theatrical detail… Hester, abandoned by her mother in childhood and ever since pathologically mourning the loss, puts on a superbly disturbed show in Hunter's luminous performance… Carr has a lovely eye and ear for Irish manners... Dominic Cooke's finely modulated production is at its taut best in the terrible finale where Hunter, screaming and hoarse with grief, holds her adored daughter in a final, deathly embrace: it says something for the potency of theatre that though we witness nothing violent or distressing in the manner of film or television newsreel, I could hardly bear to watch. By The Bog Of Cats is unmissable. It helps you see into the heart of darkness."

Charles Spencer of The Telegraph: "From the opening scene, when the Oscar-winning Hollywood actress Holly Hunter staggers on to the stage dragging a dead black swan behind her, it is clear that By the Bog of Cats can only end in tears. The problem is that too many of them are tears of barely suppressed hilarity… Hunter's attempt at Irish, or more accurately Oirish, isn't in the same league of unforgettably bad accents as, say, Dick Van Dyke's heroically dreadful Cockney chimney sweep in the film of Mary Poppins. It is, however, very odd, and very distracting… But bizarre though it is, Miss Hunter's accent is nothing like as strange as the play… Accent aside, Hunter, with her small lithe body, and sharp, tight little face gives a strong performance as Hester, forceful, feral, hissing with fury and clearly extremely dangerous to know. Her contempt for her boyfriend, her fierce love for her child, and the traumatic past that haunts her, are all strongly caught. But she can't fully succeed with a character caught in the no-man's-land between mythic fantasy and present-day Irish reality."

Michael Billington of The Guardian: "Carr's Hester, abandoned by her mother in childhood, seems more like a sad victim of circumstance than a mythic prototype. And, in a modern context, naggingly literal questions arise. Since the tormented Hester has been driven by jealousy to fratricide, you wonder why she is walking around scot-free… But the other problem with this production lies in the casting of Holly Hunter as Hester. Hunter is, without doubt, a real actress. Her Hester is a tiny bundle of muscular energy who occupies the stage… But acting skills can only take one so far: what I could never believe was that Hunter was a creature of the Irish bogs. Partly it's a matter of her tell-tale American vowels. But it's also a question of body language. Where Olwen Fouere in the original Dublin production prowled warily around the stage as if reared in the unreliable soil of middle-Ireland, Hunter has her feet firmly planted on the ground. Dominic Cooke's visually adroit production, with a curving bank of blood-stained snow designed by Hildegard Bechtler, in a sense highlights Hunter's isolation by surrounding her with a strong team of Irish actors."

Paul Taylor of The Independent: "This, alas, is not Greek drama brought up to date; it is high-class hokum hoping to gain some tragic glamour by association. I found it hard to keep a straight face from the moment when Hester first appeared dragging on the corpse of a black swan… Hunter lets rip with an explosive display of scalding scorn and furiously embattled spirit. She's undoubtedly impressive, even if her performance seems a little constrained by the effort of keeping up a thick but approximate Irish brogue that sometimes sounds like a strong contender for this year's Dick Van Dyck Award. What is disappointing is not Hunter's portrayal, but Carr's sentimentalised make-over of the Medea character."