The Talented Mr Ripley – Review – York Grand Opera House

By Karl Hornsey, January 2026

Mark Leipacher’s adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel deserves to take York’s Grand Opera House by storm, such is the outstanding nature of the production. This is by no means an easy story to transfer to the stage but, helped in no small part by a tour de force performance by Ed McVey in the title role, it’s an intense, claustrophobic and rewarding experience.

The source material is now over 70 years old, but it’s a story that will seemingly always remain relevant; simple in some respects, but deeply complex in others. It’s the story of a con artist, but a troubled and complicated con artist, for whom the reader or audience can feel sympathy for at times, rather than simply disdain and dismay.

While the eponymous Ripley is literally trying to get away with murder, his outward charm and almost childlike view on the world mean he comes across far from an out and out villain, but someone who is requiring of greater understanding.

“Stripped back”

While the 1955 novel was highly regarded at the time, in modern times, it’s the 1999 film starring Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow that brought the story to a much wider audience and set the bar incredibly high in terms of depicting the characters, demonstrating the stunning scenery of Italy and featuring outstanding performances by the leads.

The Andrew Scott Netflix vehicle Ripley also relied heavily on the beautiful Italian landscape, and provided a glossy background to the story. One disadvantage of the current stage production, of course, is that it’s impossible to recreate that backdrop and, instead, this is a stage very much stripped back. The stage management is clever, but it’s often a stark and basic backdrop, leaving the audience to use their imagination as to the locations involved.

With similarly basic sound and costume design, this puts the central character of Tom Ripley at the absolute heart of the production, and McVey isn’t off stage for a single minute of the two hours of the show. That’s an enormous ask and the danger is that such a production can entirely rise or fall on one actor’s performance.

“Maniacal tendencies”

Thankfully, in this instance, McVey delivers in spades, holding the attention from first minute to last, conveying the turmoil of a man who dislikes himself enough to want to be someone else so badly, or be with that person so badly, that he’ll go to any lengths to create a new life. Ripley, like Highsmith’s similarly psychopathic character of Bruno in Strangers on a Train, is so complex – childlike at times, but displaying maniacal tendencies at others – that it takes a phenomenal performance to get that across, and McVey’s is such a performance.

With strong support from the likes of Maisie Smith and Bruce Herbelin-Earle, this is a show that has a lot going for it. It’s not an easy watch at times, such is the intensity and the huge amount of dialogue involved, but it’s certainly rewarding.

The Talented Mr Ripley is at York Grand Opera House until 24th January
images: Mark Senior

Karl Hornsey( Writer )

Karl’s love of writing was piqued at the age of eight, when he won a Blue Peter badge in an essay-writing competition. The location of said badge might be a mystery now, but the memory never fades. Hours spent writing about sport as a teenager, in pre-internet years when you had to make your entertainment, honed his skills, and Karl has worked in TV and radio listings at PA Media for 28 years, and the age of hybrid working means 50% of that can be at home listening to Classic FM and thinking about his next visit to his beloved Yorkshire Dales.
@KarlHornsey, hornskar

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