Guest Blog: 'It’s Almost Shakespearean': Director Mark Leipacher on Compelling Characters and Exploring Emotions in THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY

It’s been 70 years since the publication of Patricia Highsmith’s celebrated thriller, and the introduction of one of literature’s greatest creations: Tom Ripley.  He’s appeared in four further novels, several films, most famously the Oscar-nominated one by Anthony Minghella, and a recent TV series on Netflix starring Andrew Scott.  This year, the numerous articles in the media about the character continue – what makes him so consistently compelling?

As we’ve been rehearsing the stage adaptation of The Talented Mr Ripley, which had its Press Night in Birmingham last week, and continues on UK tour throughout 2025 and 2026, the thing that keeps striking me is his sheer audacity and, arguably, his bravery. 

There are a few things that Tom does that most of us would find morally reprehensible and we’d never even contemplate.  Yet the same drive that makes him commit those acts, many of us might wish for in a diluted form: the “say yes” attitude, the ability to take chances, risks and tempt fate.  There’s also the unwillingness to accept conditions that are imposed on you by others; the resistance to staying in circumstances that negatively affect you. 

Watching Tom releases in all of us our want of these characteristics.  Like all good anti-heroes, we’re compelled to watch because they’re enacting things we wouldn’t dare.  We want the underdog to win… sometimes forgiving the way in which the victory is achieved.

Audiences also remain fascinated by what makes psychopaths and sociopaths tick of course, but as we’ve been rehearsing the show, we’ve resisted these labels in the rehearsal room.  Partly this is because we’re not qualified to make those assessments, but more than that, without a detailed understanding they’re reductive terms that aren’t actively playable by actors on a moment-to-moment basis. 

And furthermore, it doesn’t seem to us to chime with the character that Highsmith wrote.  Tom genuinely feels guilt, shame, regret, emotional pain, in a way that doesn’t seem consistent with a basic understanding of psychopathy.  Most tellingly for us, the ‘climax’ of the play is a ‘sacrifice’ that Tom makes, in which a happy ending is offered him, which he rejects because he fears for the safety of another human being whom he might, potentially, love.  I won’t say more for fear of spoilers, other than to say that other adaptations that follow the ‘psychopath’ line have to change that incident for it to result in a death that Highsmith didn’t write.

Perhaps that’s what disturbs us as well as compels us.  It would be easy to write off Tom with a simple diagnosis, but he doesn’t quite fit.  He’s more amorphous than that.  He’s not easily categorisable and doesn’t easily go into any boxes or labels.

What the theatre adaptation offers us in exploring that idea is to hear Tom’s internal monologue.  In the play we follow Tom’s journey through a series of soliloquies.  He shares with us his genuine, immediate, emotional and intellectual responses, thoughts and feelings in direct address.  It’s a special relationship between actor/character and audiences. Unless he’s lying to himself subconsciously, everything Tom says to the audience he truly believes, and we’re his closest confidantes – we’re almost him. 

It’s almost Shakespearean and, like all good characters in soliloquy, they pop out of the play because they don’t know how to proceed with the action.  They need the audience in order to proceed.  None of the events are pre-planned or pre-determined.  Tom isn’t methodical, he’s improvising.  His great talent is taking the circumstances that are in front of him and, on a moment-to-moment basis, finding a solution to the challenge. 

The Talented Mr Ripley is currently touring into 2026