Tag Archives: Blanche McIntyre

LETTERS FROM MAX

★★★★

Hampstead Theatre

LETTERS FROM MAX

Hampstead Theatre

★★★★

“The pair occupy the stage for two hours but there is rarely a moment that does not busy the mind or heart”

The friendship of Sarah Ruhl and her student Max Ritvo was lyrical, beautiful and tragically – horrendously – short.

Ruhl’s epistolary play, based on letters they shared during his studies at Yale and his final illness, is a labour of love, filled with scintillating disquisitions on ideas, poetry, the meaning of life, and soup.

On the return of his cancer at the age of 20, Max wrote to Sarah, “Maybe we’ll squeeze a great play out of what comes out of this.”

And so it has come to pass.

Playwright Sarah and poet Max also agreed to make a book out of their prolific, often witty, correspondence, a collection on which the play is based. She wanted it organised chronologically, he wanted the material sorted by theme, chronology doing him no favours. Chronology, in fact, being the enemy.

But Max rarely concedes to despair. He is presented as garrulous, enthusiastic, voracious, confident and prone to wild, unembarrassed antics.

As his illness takes more of a grip, he states, “I love the world but it won’t love me back.”

In director Blanche McIntyre’s production, we have two performances that are delicate and calibrated. Sirine Saba, as Sarah, has the more subtle terrain to negotiate. Burdened with melancholy and worry, she is required to mark the slow death of Max’s brilliant mind but all the time rallying him to hope.

Eric Sirakian as Max swoops and hollers, he bounces and shouts his poetry, he racks, tortures and examines every facet of his existence … until he does not and cannot any more. (Max was 25 when he died in 2016.)

The pair occupy the stage for two hours but there is rarely a moment that does not busy the mind or heart. They are hypnotic performances of peculiar intimacy and warmth.

The third presence on the stage is Laura Moody, playing the cello. Such a brilliantly simple but evocative dramatic device with such a versatile instrument – rain, seagull screeches, plinky-plonk call-backs and swooping melodic snippets bring a third voice.

But what about the transparent screen that bisects the traverse stage, hanging like a curtain, insistent and intrusive? Sometimes the pair are one side of it, sometimes they are separated. It is initially awkward and needlessly annoying, but later thematically necessary.

It indicates that dialogue, arising from letters, is not the organic to and fro as presented but chunked and illusory, separated by time and considered thought. It offers the necessary signal of separation, both momentary and, alas, permanently.

When the lighting (Guy Hoare) changes, so does the nature of the screen. It can become a mirror, a barrier, no longer transparent, the reflections adding a mirage-like shimmer to flesh and blood. At one point, Max on one side, Sarah on the other, move their arms. On the screen, their reflections are holding hands.

The play is plainly an act of obligation by the author, a promise delivered. The poem selections sometimes verge on abstraction, risking detachment. And the audience requires a certain fortitude as Max’s decline plays out with tortuous precision.

However, this is as much a play about life and living as it is death and grief. You cannot help but leave the theatre with a renewed obligation to feast on the fleeting opportunities of existence. Starting with a course of cello lessons, perhaps.

 



LETTERS FROM MAX

Hampstead Theatre

Reviewed on 2nd June 2925

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Helen Murray

 


 

 

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:

HOUSE OF GAMES | ★★★ | May 2025
PERSONAL VALUES | ★★★ | April 2025
APEX PREDATOR | ★★ | March 2025
THE HABITS | ★★★★★ | March 2025
EAST IS SOUTH | ★★★ | February 2025
AN INTERROGATION | ★★★★ | January 2025
KING JAMES | ★★★★ | November 2024
VISIT FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN | ★★ | July 2024
THE DIVINE MRS S | ★★★★ | March 2024
DOUBLE FEATURE | ★★★★ | February 2024

 

LETTERS FROM MAX

LETTERS FROM MAX

LETTERS FROM MAX

APEX PREDATOR

★★

Hampstead Theatre

APEX PREDATOR

Hampstead Theatre

★★

“the entire cast do as much as they can with the raw tools they’ve been given”

Has the time arrived for a new vampire story? John Donnelly thinks so. But unfortunately, his newest play, Apex Predator, can’t quite seem to decide what it wants to be — a commentary on postpartum depression and psychosis, or a horror-comedy about vampirism as an allegory for modern life. In trying to straddle the line between both worlds, it never really succeeds at either.

From the opening moment, we are reminded that London is a city of violence. Not only that, but no one in this city is going to help you, not really. If you expect to survive, you’re going to have to be strong. But Mia (Sophie Melville) is hardly feeling strong at the moment — her newborn, Isla, won’t feed. Her son, Alfie (Callum Knowelden), is being bullied at school. And on top of it all, her husband Joe (Bryan Dick) is sometimes away for days at his secretive job. When he does come home, they mostly bicker. Mia is exhausted. The neighbours are a nuisance, throwing parties with loud music, forcing Mia to bounce Isla to sleep night after night, and Joe seems… well, entirely unbothered by this. If anything, he appears agitated that his wife is having a tough time. Enter Alfie’s new art teacher, Ana (Laura Whitmore), who may just be able to offer Mia a way forward. The premise is interesting, if a bit old hat. How do we protect ourselves, but especially our children, in a world that grows more dangerous by the day? It’s unfortunate that each idea in the script feels under-developed, spawning into some new thread, while we ache for the previous thread to be tied.

Blanche McIntyre’s direction is confusing at times. Moments that feel like they deserve a bit more room to breathe are quite rushed, namely Mia and Ana’s very first meeting. Mia has rushed to Alfie’s school, to assert her son’s right to defend himself — he’s bitten another child, which feels like a bit of a flat pun, given the subject matter — and Ana switches from critical school bureaucrat to close confidante in ten seconds or less. Some dialogue is played for uncomfortable laughs, when the topic at hand feels anything but funny. In one specific moment, Mia runs round and round in circles, trying to find an escape, when there’s a relatively obvious one in front of her — a door that someone else has walked in through, just moments before. Whether this is down to McIntyre or the production’s Movement Director, Ingrid Mackinnon, is difficult to say.

But there are bright spots here. Whitmore is excellent as Ana, despite her character’s somewhat unconvincing arc. Melville is fascinating to watch as she swings between clarity and madness. Truthfully, the entire cast do as much as they can with the raw tools they’ve been given. The lighting and sound design (Jack Knowles and Chris Shutt, respectively) work together quite synergistically, particularly in a very short scene during the second act that evokes a moment from a slick on-screen horror. It’s just a shame that the story as written doesn’t allow for more of these gorgeous vignettes. The set design (Tom Piper) is excellent making great use of a relatively small space, surrounded by imposing scaffolding. The claustrophobia, the grit of a city like London is keenly felt.

All in all, the potential is there. One simply wishes that Donnelly had — forgive me — sunk his teeth in a bit deeper.



APEX PREDATOR

Hampstead Theatre

Reviewed on 31st March 2025

by Stacey Cullen

Photography by Ellie Kurttz


Previously reviewed at this venue:

THE HABITS | ★★★★★ | March 2025
EAST IS SOUTH | ★★★ | February 2025
AN INTERROGATION | ★★★★ | January 2025
KING JAMES | ★★★★ | November 2024
VISIT FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN | ★★ | July 2024
THE DIVINE MRS S | ★★★★ | March 2024
DOUBLE FEATURE | ★★★★ | February 2024
ROCK ‘N’ ROLL | ★★★★ | December 2023
ANTHROPOLOGY | ★★★★ | September 2023
STUMPED | ★★★★ | June 2023

APEX PREDATOR

APEX PREDATOR

APEX PREDATOR