Sandra Oh Shines in Misanthropes Messy Debut

The Misanthrope - National Theatre, London 

Rating: Two out of five stars 

Landing at the National Theatre was quite a coup. 

She has been one of the hottest actors on TV since playing the title role in the spy thriller , in which she’s mercilessly hunted by ’s psychopathic secret agent Villanelle. 

But the move was not without risk: the 54-year-old Canadian boasts barely half a dozen stage credits.

The good news is that Oh is a complete natural on stage. She has theatrical charisma to burn and does so with abandon.

The bad news is that she’s chosen a dog’s dinner of a play to make her British theatre debut: Martin Crimp’s ‘scathing’ modern update of Moliere’s 17th-century classic French comedy about a stubborn old misery guts who turns his back on the morally bankrupt French aristocracy.

In Crimp’s version, the titular misanthrope Alceste becomes Alice, a dyspeptic bestselling novelist in trouble for giving offence with a new book, and then causing psychological injury to an aspiring young fan. All very low stakes.

But when it finally gets going, Crimp's plot gets properly bogged down in hoaxes and dead ends. 

The real issue seems to be her faithless, narcissistic boyfriend, Stefan (Tom Mison), a handsome actor, addict and lothario who all too blatantly gaslights her and leads her up the garden path. Bear in mind Oh’s Alice is supposed to be a dry-eyed brain box.

The piece is written in ranting verse, constipated with all the usual censorious vexations obstructing social media (identity politics, patriarchy, artistic integrity and other yawn-along issues). 

One of the more incomprehensible turns is when Jemima Rooper, playing Stefan’s high flying ex-wife, turns Alice’s world upside down with a revelation about Stefan’s infidelity. Yet in the very next scene this twist is glibly overcome and idly discarded.

Oh’s Alice is colourfully ferocious and sometimes emotionally raw, but we are offered no good reason why anyone should care about the line-up of self-regarding metropolitan media types who surround her in what appears to be a London private members club. 

Oh apart, the most sympathetic character is her gay playwright friend John (Paul Chahidi, from the BBC’s This Country, dressed here in Maoist cottons).

Nor does the production, directed by National Theatre boss Indhu Rubasingham, make much sense of a story that ends as a bizarre 17th-century fancy dress party.

We must sincerely hope that the experience of this unedifying muddle doesn’t put Oh off a comeback. Please let her return for something more worthwhile.

The Misanthrope is playing at the Lyttelton Theatre at the National Theatre until  August 1 2026.