The Australian actor has won warm praise for her “enigmatic” performance in David Hare’s new play The Red Barn.

Elizabeth Debicki, the exciting young Australian actor who first came to prominence as Jordan Baker in Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 film The Great Gatsby, has won critical praise for her performance in David Hare’s new play The Red Barn at the Lyttelton Theatre, Royal National Theatre in London.

Elizabeth Debicki as Mona in The Red Barn. Photo by Manuel Harlan.

Hare’s play is an adaptation of Georges Simenon’s 1968 novel La Main. It is directed by Robert Icke, the wunderkind Associate Director at London Almeida’s Theatre, whose acclaimed production of 1984 comes to Sydney Theatre Company next June/July.

The Red Barn is a thriller in which two couples on the way home from a glamorous party get caught in a snow storm and have to abandon their car. Only three of them make it safely home, with Ray lost in the blizzard. When his corpse is found, the question is: was it an accident, murder or suicide?

Starring alongside Mark Strong and Hope Davis, Debicki plays the enigmatic, sexually alluring Mona Sanders, wife of the missing man. Though best known for her screen roles – including the acclaimed British television mini-series The Night Manager earlier this year – Debicki performed in Joanna Murray-Smith’s The Gift for Melbourne Theatre Company in 2011 and two years later starred alongside Cate Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert in Benedict Andrews’ Sydney Theatre Company production of Jean Genet’s The Maids, which subsequently toured to New York.

The Red Barn has received generally positive reviews. In a 4-star review in The Independent, Paul Taylor described Hare’s play as “a taut, compelling and psychologically acute stage version of La Main, the Belgian author’s study of jealousy, sexual obsession and of the impulsive action – or inaction — that can make a man’s life unravel, set in Connecticut in 1969.” Praising the “excellent” performances, Taylor said: “The impossibly elegant Elizabeth Debicki (of The Night Manager fame) exudes, like an expensive perfume, the emotional carelessness of the privileged as the widow.”

In a 3-star review in The Guardian, Michael Billington had reservations about Icke’s filmic production saying: “although it is momentarily impressive, there is something glacially chic about the whole enterprise……Over 22 scenes, the cinematic technique becomes repetitive and one begins to feel one is watching a slowly decelerating film noir.” However, he praised Icke’s direction of the actors and also the performances. Debicki, he said, “gives an immensely subtle performance: her face initially seems a blank canvas on which other people impose their desires, but there is a pivotal moment, as Mona tells Donald of her hunger for change, when Debicki’s features unforgettably cloud over with disappointment.”

What’s On Stage described Debicki’s performance as “almost as enigmatic as the one she gave in The Night Manager”, while in a 4-star review Time Out London said that Debicki is “striking as the emotionally numb Mona.”

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