The Hunt (Play)

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    ‘The Hunt’ Review: The Hunter Becomes the Hunted

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    This modern-day fable, directed by Rupert Goold and starring Tobias Menzies, is styled with horror.“Each town has its witch/Each parish its troll,” a character sings ominously while sharpening hedge shears. “We will with pleasure/Take the life from their veins.”Let it be known that the British import “The Hunt” — about a man ostracized, and worse, for a crime he didn’t commit — does not really err toward subtlety.The simple premise can be summed up in a sentence: Lucas (Tobias Menzies, from “The Crown” and “Outlander”), a small-town kindergarten teacher, is falsely accused of molesting several of his students, and his life falls apart. The Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg told the story in an understated manner in his movie “The Hunt” (2013), which is simultaneously detached and veined with warm, if subtly expressed, empathy.Now a tragedy that feels ripped from the headlines is deployed with fable-like horror stylings in a stage adaptation by David Farr directed by Rupert Goold, which just opened at St. Ann’s Warehouse. Ritualistic dancing and chanting, sacrifices, jump scares, blinding white lights, quasi-supernatural apparitions: At times it feels as if we are watching a spinoff from the cult 1973 film “The Wicker Man,” in which an island community following pagan practices drenched in sex and violence turns against an outsider.When Vinterberg made “The Hunt” (which he wrote with Tobias Lindholm), he pulled back from the Dogme 95 precepts he followed at the beginning of his career, and which emphasize an almost Puritanical minimalism. “I wanted this film to be as naked and truthful as possible, because this was a film about truth and lies, but I had to find a new way of doing it,” he said a decade ago.From left: Jonathan Savage, Danny Kirrane, Menzies, MyAnna Buring, DeBoer and Alex Hassell in the play, in a structure that can protect secrets and reveal them, offer shelter and harbor violence.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tobias Menzies on ‘The Crown’ and His Role in ‘The Hunt’

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      The British actor excels at playing reserve, and what roils beneath, on “The Crown.” And now he brings that stoicism to “The Hunt,” onstage in Brooklyn.On a morning in early February, the actor Tobias Menzies walked the Brooklyn Heights Promenade in the relative anonymity he prefers. Menzies wasn’t hiding. He wore no sunglasses, no cap, just Blundstones, jeans, a shearling coat. He didn’t duck when people came his way. But the past few years, including multi-season stints on “The Crown” and “Outlander,” have brought him a new visibility, which still makes him uneasy.“I’m not that confident about my life or what it is to be able to put it out in the public,” he said, shoulders hunched against the breeze. “I’m just bumbling along as best I can.”Menzies, 49, had come to Brooklyn, to rehearse “The Hunt,” a theatrical adaptation of the Thomas Vinterberg movie that begin performances at St. Ann’s Warehouse on Friday. Back in 2019, Menzies had originated the stage role of Lucas, a preschool teacher falsely accused of exposing himself to a child, in a London production. A member of a local hunting club, Lucas now finds himself targeted by the community that once embraced him.In the years since “The Hunt” premiered, Menzies has won an Emmy, for playing Prince Philip on the Netflix hit “The Crown,” and a fan base for his dual roles of Frank Randall and his sadistic ancestor Black Jack Randall on the Starz series “Outlander.” He also played somewhat against type as an anxious therapist in Nicole Holofcener’s acerbic comedy “You Hurt My Feelings.”Menzies has won an Emmy, for playing Prince Philip on the Netflix hit “The Crown,” opposite Olivia Colman.Sophie Mutevelian/NetflixFive years ago, the role made perfect sense for Menzies, who specializes in wounded masculinity. The play, adapted by David Farr, is caustic and cerebral, and it reunited him with a frequent collaborator, the director Rupert Goold. And Lucas is a type that Menzies has often gravitated toward, a man unable, whether by upbringing, temperament or circumstance, to show his feelings. Lucas benefits from both Menzies’ natural reserve and his ability to show what roils beneath that stoicism, a game of emotive hide-and-seek.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More