Review: Shawshank Redemption, Richmond ★★★½

A beloved film, loyally staged

Few films have earned their place in popular affection quite so unexpectedly as The Shawshank Redemption. When it was released in 1994, it was something close to a commercial failure, earning only around $16 million in its initial theatrical run, losing out at that year’s Academy Awards to Forrest Gump, and very nearly disappearing altogether. It was the VHS rental market, and then years of television broadcast, that gradually built its reputation until it became one of the most beloved films of its generation. That improbable arc is, in its own way, rather Shawshank: quiet persistence eventually winning out.

The source, of course, comes before the film. Stephen King‘s novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption was published in 1982 as part of the collection Different Seasons, a book in which King was deliberately exploring territory away from the horror that had made him famous. It is a story about a man unjustly imprisoned for his wife’s murder, about the systems that grind people down, and about the peculiar, stubborn force of hope in conditions designed to extinguish it. At its centre is the library that Andy Dufresne builds inside Shawshank’s walls: not merely a room of books, but the visible, accumulating evidence of one man’s refusal to be entirely consumed by his circumstances.

This stage adaptation was written by Owen O’Neill and Dave Johns. It was first staged in 2009 and has been revised across several subsequent productions. Faithful to the novella and the film, O’Neill and Johns have not entirely solved the challenge of making the stage version feel like one coherently building story rather than a series of related scenes.

Gary McCann‘s set is impressive. He creates a genuinely effective sense of Shawshank’s different spaces: the sparse, defeated geometry of the cells contrasting against the heavy, self-satisfied mahogany of the warden’s office. The transitions are clean and the physical world has real texture. We completely feel ourselves to be in Shawshank Penitentiary.

Review: Shawshank Redemption, Richmond

Photo: Jack Merriman

Ben Onwukwe as Ellis ‘Red’ Redding is the undoubted star of the evening. He first played the role on the production’s 2016 tour and brings to it thirty years of accumulated stage experience, including work with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Court. His Red has warmth, authority and earned weariness in exactly the right proportions. As narrator he guides us through this production and ably stands up to the comparison with Morgan Freeman‘s celebrated film performance.

Joe McFadden brings intelligence and watchfulness to Andy Dufresne. His discomfort in early scenes is clearly portrayed.

Bill Ward brings real presence asthe warden. His is a role that calls for a particular quality of cold, institutional menace, the kind of threat that does not need to raise its voice, and that dimension does not quite fully emerge.

In the film, the library fills with books: a physical record of Andy’s quiet campaign against the institution. Here the number of volumes and the pleasure of their use never obviously grows. Without a focus on that accumulation, the production surrenders one of its most potent theatrical tools.

For those coming to the story fresh, or those who simply want the pleasure of spending time with characters they already love, this is a solid and enjoyable evening.