BIRD GROVE

Hampstead Theatre

★★★★

“a confident production, keen to entertain and doing so with ease”

As a debate rages about the death of reading, award-winning playwright Alexi Kaye Campbell comes at us with an easily digestible and endlessly spirited primer on George Eliot.

This new play comes bookended with a slice of drawing room farce at the beginning to ease us in – think Malvolio courting Elizabeth Bennet – and a curiously on-the-nose coda at the end. This is in case we still haven’t figured out that headstrong Mary Ann Evans is destined to become the author of Middlemarch under a gender-swapping nom de plume.

For the most part, though, this is an engrossing and serious study of a young woman loved and wronged repeatedly; a victim of her age, her sex and her voracious curiosity.

To 1840s Coventry then, and Bird Grove, for this fact-based origin story.

The setting (Sarah Beaton) conveys an elegant five rooms simply devised on a rotating stage. This is the home of Robert Evans (Owen Teale) who has worked all his life to acquire such a property, a bowerbird’s nest in which to show off his unmarried daughter Mary Ann (Elizabeth Dulau).

But bird’s fly and nests are emptied, and that is certainly in the mind of Mary Ann who decides one day, after much turmoil, not to accompany her father to church. She doesn’t believe in the dogma of religion nor the marketplace of singletons.

The declaration is shocking.

In the face of this stand, one is stubborn, the other is wilful. And vice versa.

They are barely separate creatures in that regard.

Despite the fissure, there is always a chance of rapprochement. It is beautifully touching that twice widowed Robert Evans is exasperated and infuriated by his daughter’s defiance – but also proud in his own contained way.

He is a simple man, plain spoken, a grafter of no great insight. Except in this matter.

When smug allies and “free thinkers” Mr and Mrs Bray (Tom Espiner and Rebecca Scroggs) try to arbitrate, they list Mary Ann’s many talents. He has the perfect riposte to their snobbery.

“You are intelligent people and astute at least in spotting my daughter’s genius, but how astounding that you have not entertained the notion that I have spotted it myself.”

It’s true. An estate manager by profession, he knows how to rescue pigs from their own muck, but he also knows what possesses his daughter, even though he cannot fully come to terms with her significance.

Despite a nine-strong cast, the play is a classic double act of opposites – young and old, parent and child, traditional and progressive – rendering the early toilet troubles of silly suitor Horace Garfield (a winning Jonnie Broadbent) and other farcical diversions into something forgettable.

The chemistry, diffidence and opposition of father and daughter is key. Owen Teale as Robert is a towering man, a thunderous spirit and yet strangely uncertain for much of the play. But he discovers a resounding and unshakeable timbre when his convictions are truly challenged.

And Elizabeth Dulau as Mary Ann is as bright and fresh as the country morning – perspicacious, revolutionary, chafing at the yoke and aching to meet her destiny. If Dulau wasn’t a star already – thanks to Andor – this performance would bring her to notice. She embodies the duel of duty and ambition but retains crystal clarity throughout.

There are some quirks in the production – the language is a hybrid of formality and modern idioms and the business with the French mesmerist (James Staddon) seems – again – unnecessary. Meanwhile, Anna Ledwich’s graceful direction can sometimes become stilted.

But this is a confident production, keen to entertain and doing so with ease.

BIRD GROVE

Hampstead Theatre

Reviewed on 23rd February 2026

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Johan Persson

BIRD GROVE

LEAVES OF GLASS at the Park Theatre

★★★★

“Max Harrison’s staging is beautifully faithful and sympathetic to the writing.”

Memories contain errors. Memory is highly malleable; therefore, often unreliable. It can be altered by emotional state from the very second it becomes a memory. Or many years later. Yet most of us like to think our own recollections are infallible, even when we know we might be twisting it. That’s just survival, according to Philip Ridley who explores these themes in his 2007 play “Leaves of Glass”. The middle episode of his ‘Brothers Trilogy’, it was preceded by ‘Mercury Fur’ and followed by ‘Piranha Heights’.

“Leaves of Glass” centres around two brothers, Steven (Ned Costello) and Barry (Joseph Potter). Five years apart in age, but on the surface, they couldn’t be further apart from each other. Steven runs a successful graffiti removal business while Barry, despite being a bit of a dogsbody in the firm, is a struggling artist. Steven appears to have his head screwed on, whereas Barry’s is lost in drink and hallucinations. Their respective memories of their father, whom they lost at a young age, are on different tracks. Yet there are similarities that bond them. But like similar poles of a magnet, they repel each other. Their mother Liz (Kacey Ainsworth) tentatively holds them together, despite her affections wavering between the two as wildly as her own recollections. The only solid presence is Steven’s pregnant wife Debbie (Katie Eldred) who is aware of the fragility of the family, but her tolerance doesn’t stretch to assuring nothing gets broken.

The intensity of the play comes not just from the spoken word, but the silence that surrounds a traumatic incident from the brothers’ childhood that neither seems willing to talk about. When the silence snaps, the effect is shocking. The pieces come together but nothing fits, as the final battle of memories is like a duel to the death.

“Sam Glossop’s underscore splits the play’s segments like splinters of sound that throw us off balance”

The intensity of the play also undoubtedly comes from the performances. Costello and Potter both capture the inherent danger in Ridley’s script and in their characters. Costello in particular, like a brooding prisoner who never leaves the stage. Neither can escape their version of the truth – a truth that we can only keep guessing about. Eldred’s Debbie, the outsider, is more grounded but not quite strong enough to dodge the fallout from the brothers’ mind games. Ainsworth is a mix of concern and complicity as the mother who inflates her own ability to cope. ‘I’ve buried two parents and a husband’ she continually reminds us, ‘I think I’m capable of carrying some tea and biscuits’. The little hints of domesticity are a thin gauze over the deep cracks that run through this family.

Ridley’s signature is splashed all over the piece, although less shocking, and perhaps more thoughtful, than some of his other work. Max Harrison’s staging is beautifully faithful and sympathetic to the writing. Some scenes are short, like pieces of broken glass. Other scenes start when they are already up and running. They end unresolved. It is discomforting and reflects the unravelling of the minds of these four protagonists. The actors come into the scenes from different angles – as jagged as the eponymous leaves of glass. Alex Lewer’s lighting is just as evocative, swinging from harshness to near darkness like a horror film’s bare light bulb; while Sam Glossop’s underscore splits the play’s segments like splinters of sound that throw us off balance.

It is difficult to tell the difference between a lie and a truth misremembered. This family is built on both – a pretty unstable foundation to begin with. It is not always easy viewing to witness, but the craftmanship of the acting and the writing force us not to look away. Memory may be fragile, but “Leaves of Glass” will be difficult to forget.

Tag Archives: Katie Eldred

BIRD GROVE

★★★★

Hampstead Theatre

BIRD GROVE

Hampstead Theatre

★★★★

“a confident production, keen to entertain and doing so with ease”