'Rebecca' by Daphne Du Maurier is the story of Maxim de Winter, a widower who remarries less than a year after his first wife, Rebecca, drowns. He brings his new, young bride back to Manderley, his house in Cornwall, but she quickly starts to believe that Rebecca still has a strange hold over Maxim and their servants. BBC Radio Leicester's Martin Ballard spoke to Jenna Renshaw who plays the second Mrs de Winter and Amanda Waldy who plays Maxim's sister, Beatrice, in 'Rebecca'…Whether it was the lack of theatre in Leicester in recent months, the well-known plot or the lure of Nigel Havers, 'Rebecca' sold out its one-week run at the Haymarket weeks before the show opened. The audience seemed to mainly consist of Nigel Havers's fans, although it could be argued that Rosalind March, who played the menacing housekeeper, Mrs Danvers, had the meatier role. | "Havers was enjoyable to watch, but his performance did not go beyond expectation." | | Katharine Sutton, BBC Leicester reporter |
She conveyed the frighteningly obsessive character well, and was particularly sinister in her appearances at the side of the stage, lit only by a spotlight, when observing other characters' conversations. Havers too was enjoyable to watch, but his performance did not go beyond expectation. His witty one-liners and smooth unflappability of the first half did not seem to sit evenly with his impassioned outburst in the second, but his clipped English drawl did seem so perfectly Maxim de Winter that it went some way in remedying the other inconsistencies. Like the production in general, Jenna Renshaw's performance improved in the second half. She seemed to thrive as the more confident Mrs de Winter of the later scenes, whereas her submissiveness (which manifested in constant bending forwards) at the start proved wearing. The simple scenery worked well as a seafront, but less so as the interior of Manderley, when a little more set would have created more atmosphere. Overall, 'Rebecca' was enjoyable and the 14-person cast worked together well. The ending seemed to come out of nowhere though, and seems more than a bit derivative of Charlotte Bronte's 'Jane Eyre'… But did 'Rebecca' achieve unforgettable theatre? Almost. | 
