Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
How many adaptations per decade do Elena FerrantesThe Neapolitan Novelsreally need?
(Despite the title, it incorporates all four novels, each compressed into one act.)
Even Harry Potter waited longer to make his two-part stage debut.
It takes you a moment to realize that thesearethe children.
But then, very quickly, you cease to notice it at all.
As Lenu, Cusack is marvelous.
She never wholly sheds a girlish timidity as she ages from a poverty-stricken child to a wealthy novelist.
Catherine McCormack is Lila, and her blistering, feral performance alone would justify the casting of adults.
Her voice is husky, her eyes hooded and hard.
She carries herself with unnerving stillness, whether as a barefoot street urchin or an exhausted factory worker.
By far the biggest audience laugh comes in response to the line Youre 45 years old!
delivered to a character whose age, suffice it to say, was not apparent until then.
Oh, yes, I thought: thatisthe size of the psychic space taken up by a new baby.
Times change,My Brilliant Friendsuggests, but people never really do.
Or perhaps its the reverse: We all stay stubbornly ourselves, yet history keeps zooming on.
How could it be over already werent they all just children a moment ago?
Where did the time go?
My Brilliant Friend is at the National Theatre in London.
