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★★★

“The performances are uniformly magnificent: honest and brutal. Yet it stops just short of drawing us in emotionally”

Towards the end of Naomi Wallace’s “The Breach”, the joint protagonist, Jude, is imagining a version of the past that didn’t happen, but could have. It takes a while to get there but the scene encapsulates both the power and impotence of hindsight. The characters wrestle with regret, bereavement and guilt, but more so with the question of whether that could have been avoided had they acted differently.

The play jumps between 1977 and 1991, initially as two very different worlds but gradually they overlap and the two separate decades bear witness to each other. Set against a completely bare stage there is little to differentiate the two ages. Different actors play the younger and older versions of the characters. Between the scenes a stark line of white light sweeps the stage, brushing them away like skittles to replace them with their counterparts.

We begin in the seventies, in small town America, a time of restlessness, turbulence, political scandal and a questioning of traditional authority (there are extensive, weighty articles in the programme notes depicting the profound effects on the American youth of the Vietnam War and ‘Neoliberalism’ – although not touched upon at all in the script). Seventeen-year-old Jude (Shannon Tarbet) has taken it upon herself to protect her younger brother Acton (Stanley Morgan). They spend their days in the basement of their modest home creating their own world. Frayne (Charlie Beck) and Hoke (Alfie Jones) gate-crash this world – not so much friends of Acton but emotional racketeers. Conditions are laid and sacrifices must be made. Inevitably the bond between brother and sister is snapped in two. In hindsight, the love they shared that could have prevented this is the exact same love that caused it.

So, you cannot escape the actions of the past then. But can you learn from them? Tellingly there is no casting for the older Acton, but Jude (Jasmine Blackborow), Frayne (Douggie McMeekin) and Hoke (Tom Lewis) reconvene fourteen years later. As each snapshot of 1991 plays out onstage, more is revealed of the dangerous games the teenagers played, focusing on many issues – most notably sexual consent. A lot is said today about how it was a ‘different time’, back then. But accountability (rightly or wrongly) has no limits. As these thirty-somethings examine their past, one wonders who the victims and who the culprits are. And are the intervening years of guilt and atonement enough or should further punishment be executed? This play, while never giving us a succinct answer, suggests we punish ourselves enough. There are no winners.

Sarah Frankcom’s sharp and efficient direction matches Wallace’s writing which is as penetrative as ever. The performances are uniformly magnificent: honest and brutal. Yet it stops just short of drawing us in emotionally. We don’t quite see the fragility, fear and loneliness that lies beneath the rough exterior. Which is a shame, and a surprise. Based partially on past experience, it seems that Wallace has poured a lot of her own heart into the writing; but ultimately it appeals more to the intellect than to our hearts.

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Johan Persson

Til Death Do Us Part

Theatre503

Reviewed – 10th May 2022

★★★★★

“a quite remarkable feat of theatre making all round”

If you could go back in time, what would you do? What would you change?

It is an over familiar and well-worn question. The subject of many late-night rambling discussions, and a theme in many more dramas on stage and on screen. So, another play in which the characters frequently ask one another the question suggests a claggy hour and a half of yawn stifling.

But don’t be fooled. Safaa Benson-Effiom’s debut full-length play approaches the question in a wonderfully fresh and deeply harrowing way. Partly because, although a leitmotif, it is secondary to the narrative; unanswered and pushed into a corner by the distressing circumstances and events that spearhead the action. “Til Death Do Us Part” is essentially a drama about love and relationships and what happens when they fracture. We don’t always have the language to express the pain and grief that is felt.

After fifteen years of marriage, Daniel (Richard Holt) and Sylvia (Danielle Kassaraté) find themselves simultaneously drifting apart and trapped together. They are a fairly normal couple, with fairly normal lives and a teenage son (Jude Chinchen) from whom they think the darker undercurrents of their marriage are hidden. When faced with their worst nightmare the couple are forced to confront the years of unspoken resentment. Unarmed, except for the rapier-like honesty which cuts to the surface, they fight their common demons alone.

Benson-Effiom plays with time. We are, at once, in the present and the past but the text yields no confusion under Justina Kehinde’s extremely slick direction that creates a world where memories and ghosts are one and the same. Tom Foskett-Barnes’ ominously evocative sound design lends touches of the supernatural, although we are still firmly rooted in reality. It is a quite remarkable feat of theatre making all round.

But at the forefront are the performances. Holt and Kassaraté dress their characters in more layers than you can count. Both of them unpredictable, they seize the danger inherent in Benson-Effiom’s writing. The portrayal of their heartache, loss, failure, regrets and fears are as blistering as the sparks that fly between them. Chinchen’s Andrew is equally mesmerising as the schoolboy, all smiles and effervescence concealing invisible cracks, playing his parents off each other right through to the tragic climax. In a novel twist the climax precedes the build-up, which paradoxically intensifies each.

The exploration of grief and blame is profound but not heavy handed. A short line of dialogue is enough to convey a decade of emotion. We live in a society where platitudes abound that try to make sense of the chaos that extreme loss wreaks. This insightful production makes them flesh. A riveting, must-see ninety minutes of theatre. If you can see beyond the trigger warnings, Safaa Benson-Effiom is a name to look out for.

Category Archives: Reviews

The Breach

★★★

Hampstead Theatre

Hampstead Theatre

Reviewed – 12th May 2022

★★★

“The performances are uniformly magnificent: honest and brutal. Yet it stops just short of drawing us in emotionally”

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Johan Persson

The Breach

Hampstead Theatre until 4th June

Recently reviewed at this venue:

Night Mother | ★★★★ | October 2021

The Forest | ★★★ | February 2022

The Fever Syndrome | ★★★ | April 2022

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