★★★★

“The supporting cast are uniformly excellent, providing light and shade where needed”

If you break a hologram, the original image remains visible in each fragment, but the viewing angle for each piece is narrower, like looking through a smaller window. Every fragment shows the whole picture, but from a different perspective.

Tracy Letts’ intriguing play, “Mary Page Marlowe”, is constructed along similar lines. Carefully selected moments, some mundane and some pivotal, are patch-worked together in no particular order to paint a full, yet intimate, portrait of a woman. An “unexceptional” woman, according to the titular character herself. The experience for the audience, though, is quite the opposite. It is an exceptional and extraordinary play in which time is random. Five actors perform the role of Mary Page Marlowe, charting seventy years of her life over the course of eleven short scenes. A cradle to grave story (the baby Mary is represented by a doll – a less risky proposition than having a real baby onstage as in the premiere nine years ago in Chicago) that spirals around the life of Mary Page – along with her three husbands, two children, alcoholic mother, palliative nurse, therapist, lover… and so on.

We first see her explaining how her divorce will affect and uproot her children, before we flip back to her bright and buoyant schooldays, before fast forwarding to her twilight years. She is then a baby, mewling and puking; and then the lover, sighing like a furnace. There are indeed reflections on Shakespeare’s seven stages of life, albeit as though the bard had thrown his folio into the air and let the pages fall haphazardly around him.

Each scene is succinct and stand alone in its own right; with outstanding, natural performances from the entire cast. The common thread is often missing, however, and we feel that we are not watching the same woman in different stages of her life, but many people’s stories. The distancing of emotional connection that this results in is compensated for, however, by the ingenious structure and Matthew Warchus’ sublime direction. Staged in the round, it emphasises the concept that past, present and future are as one. When the telephone rings at the end of one scene, the weight of its significance is truly felt because we have already seen what comes after.

Each Mary is highly watchable. Alisha Weir’s twelve-year-old Mary is a convincing mix of obstinance and innocence whose rose-tinted view of life is already eroded by her late teens: Eleanor Worthington-Cox captures the ambiguity of hope versus disillusionment in denial. The more Mary ages, the stronger the characterisation. Rosy McEwen, as Mary the adulteress, is a personality to be reckoned with, while Andrea Riseborough lights up the stage every time she appears with her brutally honest energy and physicality, steering Mary on a crash course off the rails. Many people may be drawn to this show by the casting of Susan Sarandon, but the play is, by no means, a vehicle for starry casting. Sarandon has as little stage time as the others, and she uses it as efficiently. Poised and in complete control, Sarandon evokes regret and sadness with a stoicism that matches her presence.

The supporting cast are uniformly excellent, providing light and shade where needed. Kingsley Morton’s schoolfriend, Connie, is a very funny breath of fresh air. Melanie La Barrie’s nurse is wryly comic but wise. A wisdom that is perhaps missing from Mary’s mother, grippingly portrayed by Eden Epstein. The moods are heightened by Hugh Vanstone’s sensitive lighting, but occasionally dampened by some overlong scene changes.

Despite all, however, Letts’ storytelling is a bit of a puzzle and, at times, hard work. The scrambled record of events can be distracting and the true hold on our attention is sometimes out of reach. We are never really let into the life of Mary Page Marlowe. The play hides as much as it reveals, which is part of its charm, but it is also frustratingly inconsequential. Letts wants us to question how much we can really know a person – even ourselves. We are teased into wanting to find out the answer, but left hanging. However, the meaninglessness (for want of a better word) is, in turn, inconsequential. We are won over by the truly mesmerising ensemble cast.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL at the Old Vic

★★★★★

“an evening of pure magic”

You could argue (and many people do) that the run up to Christmas gets earlier and earlier each year. No sooner have the pumpkins rotted and the fake cobwebs blown away from the city’s hedgerows, than the festive lights are switched on and Santa dominates the shop window displays. We utter ‘Humbug’ in disapproval and complain about rampant commercialism, while inwardly allowing the child in us a little bit of excitement. There is always a watershed, though, after which we can openly embrace the festive season without shame; and over the years one of them has become opening night of the Old Vic’s “A Christmas Carol”. It may still be November, but the annual event in Waterloo is now as traditional as mince pies. The spirit of Christmas is officially declared in our capital. And Old Marley is dead as a door nail.

Tradition rules in what is a faithful, but inspired, telling of Charles Dickens’ ‘ghostly little book’. Originally written in five staves it seems to be inviting a musical underscore, which Christopher Nightingale more than excels in providing. From the opening (and closing) handbell ringing through to the filmic strings and reeds, not to mention the chorale harmonies of the cast – dubbed ‘singing creatures’ by Scrooge. The ensemble cast also double up as a kind of chorus, in Victorian black and stove pipe hats, giving us stylised and choreographed snippets of Dickens’ evocative prose to link the staves of the story.

Central to the story, obviously, is old Ebenezer Scrooge. This year John Simm wears the cloak with an easy assurance. Not so much fearsome but more brooding. Beneath the initial rancour, one can glimpse a sensitivity that Simm brings that could almost excuse his forbidding nature; amplified by the flashbacks to his childhood at the hands of an abusive, debt-ridden father (an impressive Mark Goldthorp, who doubles as Marley’s ghost). Forgiveness and hope are essential strands in the narrative, and we understand how those hard done by, at Scrooge’s hand, manage to keep hold of this precarious quality. Juliette Crosbie’s Belle encapsulates this with a sharp and, at times, heart-rending portrayal of Scrooge’s lost love.

The three ghosts of ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘yet-to-come’ are more mischievous than menacing in their matching patchwork cloaks. With the quality of a Shakespearian fool, they each lay open the painful truth Scrooge has spent a lifetime avoiding. In Jack Thorne’s imaginative adaptation, Scrooge’s little sister, Fan (Georgina Sadler) who died in childbirth, haunts him as the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. An impassioned dialogue over Scrooge’s own coffin is a deeply moving moment. Our hearts break at other times, too. When Scrooge watches himself as a young boy he wistfully proclaims, “I don’t want him to become me”. A pause. “I want him to love”. Those simple four words are a pivotal point, the epiphanic moment that assures us he has reached the turning point. From then on, our own spirits are lifted to the roof; accompanied perfectly by the music that slowly swells from a plaintive a cappella solo voice to a sumptuous choir. Cut to black. A few seconds of pure and thick silence, and we are back in the present.

We are constantly and fully immersed in the story, whether sitting in the balcony, alongside the thrust of the playing space, or even on the stage itself. Director Matthew Warchus makes full use of the auditorium, resulting in a theatricality that cannot be faulted. Sparse yet evocative, we feel we are on the cobbled streets outside, with Rob Howell’s empty door frames made solid by Simon Baker’s ingenious sound design. Hugh Vanstone’s lighting is the icing on the cake (the brandy on the pudding) that adds the final magical flourishes. Simm’s transformation of character on Christmas morning is filled with a boyish ecstasy – a joy that we share watching this production. It is an evening of pure magic. Momentarily, the show slips out of character and flirts with pantomime – complete with chutes of sprouts and a low-flying turkey on a zip-wire. But the enchantment is swiftly restored. Joyous, evocative, atmospheric and spirited, “A Christmas Carol” is a tradition that has survived the past and will live long into the future. The Old Vic’s seasonal offering joins that tradition – and is the perfect Christmas present.

Tag Archives: Hugh Vanstone

MARY PAGE MARLOWE

★★★★

Old Vic

MARY PAGE MARLOWE

Old Vic

★★★★

“The supporting cast are uniformly excellent, providing light and shade where needed”

MARY PAGE MARLOWE

Old Vic

Reviewed on 8th October 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Manuel Harlan

Previously reviewed at this venue:

THE BRIGHTENING AIR | ★★★★ | April 2025

A CHRISTMAS CAROL | ★★★★★ | November 2024

THE REAL THING | ★★★★ | September 2024

MACHINAL | ★★★★ | April 2024

JUST FOR ONE DAY | ★★★★ | February 2024

A CHRISTMAS CAROL | ★★★★★ | November 2023

PYGMALION | ★★★★ | September 2023

MARY

MARY

MARY

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

★★★★★

Old Vic

A CHRISTMAS CAROL at the Old Vic

★★★★★

“an evening of pure magic”