Tobias Menzies (The Crown, Game of Thrones) makes a breathtaking U.S. stage debut in the critically lauded Almeida Theatre production The Hunt (starting February 16, 2024), based on Thomas Vinterberg’s 2012 film Jagten. The Hunt catapults audiences into some of today’s thorniest questions surrounding mob justice. In a performance that has been described as “superb” (Sunday Times), “devastating” (Evening Standard), and “extraordinarily powerful and restrained” (The Stage), Menzies portrays an elementary school teacher accused of misconduct by a child in a rural Danish hunting town. Rupert Goold’s thrilling staging unfolds on Es Devlin’s brilliant set, a literal glass house revolving into anarchy. The Hunt is the second adaptation of a Vinterberg work presented by St. Ann’s Warehouse, following its 2012 U.S. premiere of Grzegorz Jarzyna’s blistering, “viscerally charged” (The New York Times) production of Festen, Vinterberg’s final Dogme 95 film.
The little girl, who will emerge as a significant character, was played at a recent preview by the extraordinary child actress Aerina DeBoer (Kay Winard alternates in the role), who never lets us forget how the lies of the very young, particularly the more fanciful and confused, can differ from those told by their elders. Other standouts amid an excellent cast include Raphael Casey, touching as Lucas’s fiercely loyal teenage son; Alex Hassell, at once raw and nuanced as Lucas’s conflicted best friend; and MyAnna Buring, witty and haunting as the friend’s wife, for whom the play’s twists have deep personal relevance.
Director Rupert Goold, the artistic director of London’s Almeida Theater, where David Farr’s adaptation debuted in 2019, has turned the story into an exercise in inventive staging. In an early scene, members of Lucas’ hunting lodge sing raucous drinking songs and perform what feels like a savage ritual (in the film, they just swam naked in the local lake); later, in an apparent nod to the main community activity of deer-hunting, we see Minotaur-like figures. Es Devlin, the Tony-winning scenic designer for “The Lehman Trilogy,” has created another transparent cube for “The Hunt” – a small one in the middle of the stage that serves as the classroom, the local hunting lodge, the local church with the characters crowded inside, as if to emphasize the (claustrophobic?) closeness of the community. Characters magically appear and disappear in the cube – and not just human ones.
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