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Wicked Little Letters

APRIL 12 - 17

The Lost Daughter’s Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley are reunited—as antagonists with polar-opposite personalities this time—in director Thea Sharrock’s hilariously profane dismantling of Masterpiece Theatre-fed myths of British gentility and piousness. Set in a terribly twee little seaside village in 1920’s Sussex, Colman and Buckley play Edith and Rose, respectively; they’re next-door neighbors whose private animosity becomes a community matter when Edith is victimized by a barrage of anonymous poison pen letters. Rose, a bawdy, foul-mouthed (and Irish) single mother, is the natural suspect, resulting in her arrest. Edith, a spinster under the thumb of her domineering father Edward (Timothy Spall), becomes a quasi-martyr. But then other people in the community start receiving nasty, rather awkwardly obscene letters, and it’s up to local police officer Gladys (Anjana Vasan) to get to the bottom of things. Using a notorious true-life case as their jumping-off point, Sharrock and screenwriter Jonny Sweet fashion a tart, nimble satire that skewers any romantic notions of British stuffiness and “reserve.” Rose may be the raucous, lusty free spirit that the town of Littlehampton fears, but as the letters reveal, it’s the deeply-buried anger hiding behind placid docility that’s more dangerous. The “mystery” of who the letter-writer is doesn’t drive the story; it’s mostly irrelevant because in this toxic, uptight patriarchy, anybody could reasonably be the culprit. Themes of class prejudice, misogyny, and religious hypocrisy abound, but Wicked Little Letters keeps the tone from getting too heavy. It’s a terrific showcase for complex, compelling performances from Colman, Buckley, Spall, Vasan, and a rich supporting cast that includes Gemma Jones as Edith’s meek mum and Hugh Skinner as a dunderheaded policeman. The warfare between Colman and Buckley takes the spotlight, but this is a genuine ensemble piece where everyone’s clearly having a ball. 

(Rated R for brief sexual content, nudity, profanity, and smoking.)