★★★★

“plays on our fears at several levels”

This is a startling (nay, shocking) short play and it is startlingly good. What writer/actor Benny Ainsworth and director Michael Parker manage to achieve in a mere 55 minutes is extraordinary.

There is no getting away from it, however, so best to get it out front. This play is firmly in the horror genre. So if graphic descriptions of killing disturb you, you should probably stay away.

It is difficult to describe without giving a lot away – the theatre blurb is well crafted and as much as you need to start with. This play is partly metaphor. Vermin scratch in the floorboards and walls of the home that Billy (Ainsworth) and Rachel (Sally Paffett) have lovingly built; but psychological vermin are at play in their relationship. And then the metaphor turns horrifyingly real.

Billy and Rachel tell their story in a rapid two-hander, bouncing off and interrupting each other, cosying up, then letting rip. Soliloquies are interleaved. They play out early love scenes and flashbacks of darkness, then take the road to trust crumbling and a shocking end.

Paffett won a well-deserved award for her performance when the play was presented at the Arcola in 2024. She is a class act: bubbly and naive one moment; heartbreaking the next; and calculating and sinister in undertones, as she sets the house and the relationship on the road to ruin. Ainsworth is equally good as a loving man, proud of his practical skills, who reveals a frightening obsession with killing that, despite his best efforts, he can’t shake off.

As Director and Technical Director, Parker has a confident hand, keeping the surrounding environment spartan in order to better highlight the performances. The set consists of two chairs on a dark empty stage. Very subtle changes of lighting (Alex Lewer) punctuate the scene and highlight turning moments and traps.

I’m no expert on the horror genre, but I believe the point – in films, TV and on stage – is to bring nightmares into consciousness and in so doing allow larger fears to be shared and released. Vermin plays on our fears at several levels – it could also spark a wider conversation about society and what happens when we fail to deal with trauma. Whether I will sleep tonight is another matter.

DR FREUD WILL SEE YOU NOW, MRS HITLER

Upstairs at the Gatehouse

★★★★

“As an insight into the lives of both protagonists, it is a very worthwhile evening.”

From Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, the writers of Birds of a Feather, Roll Over Beethoven, The New Statesman and a multitude of other celebrated TV comedy dramas, comes this new work, premiered at UATG.

It’s an odd one. Not a comedy, but with comic moments. Not an imagined story, but a fantasy setting of four seminal meetings of these two huge figures who, it could be said, actually changed the world. Not a play with tension – we know the ending for these characters, after all. And it also takes a bit of time to get into it. The opening scenes are clunky, if dramatic. But when it gets into its stride, this is a first class evening’s entertainment for anyone interested in these giants of 20th century history and how their actions still resonate now.

The basic premise of the play, directed by UATG’s artistic director Isaac Bernier-Doyle, is straightforward. As an infant, Adolf Hitler suffers from nightmares and bedwetting. Mrs Hitler (played by Nesba Crenshaw who skilfully transitions into Mrs Freud in subsequent scenes) takes him to the family doctor who recommends that the child attend a new nervous disorders clinic, run by you-know-who. Her extremely violent husband refuses to let her. But what if he had? Could proper psychological treatment have changed the course of history?

This is the clunky bit. Anna Freud (acted with great warmth by lovely Ruby Ablett) introduces and closes the play with this question. It is not very clear why the narrative arc is given to her to manage. And in the first of four main imaginary scenes of meetings between Hitler and Freud, the attempt to analyse Hitler doesn’t really hit the right note – although Hitler’s introduction into the scene as a child is suitably comic. Freud’s ‘analysis’ of Hitler is cursory, and we already know what is causing the problem.

After that, the drama gets going. Through successive encounters over the period leading up to the Second World War we see Hitler become the man he is going to be. His paranoia and inherited violent nature emerges; his belief that he is at core a misunderstood and rejected artist is given reign; and his need for attention and praise is on full display. So, actually, the answer to the ‘what if’ question is ‘no’. Because what you get here is snippets of the real lives and real personalities of Freud and Hitler. The research behind this play was impeccable and manifests in the coincidences that Marks and Gran have used to create the structure the play. As an insight into the lives of both protagonists, it is a very worthwhile evening.

What it is not, however, is a comedy. There are laughs and light moments. Apparently, Freud was known for his love of humour, but he makes bad jokes and the audience laughter was rare. I wondered if the subject matter at its heart was just too dark for us to laugh at it. Or maybe because the consequences of Hitler’s antisemitism still echo down this century.

A word about the key performances. Jonathan Taffler is Sigmund Freud. He really is. He was an utterly believable character, in turns ironic, arch and strong but always kind. Sam Mac as Hitler is completely watchable: needy, boastful, resentful and his outbursts of anger (cleverly echoed in a soundscape of Hitler’s actual speeches) are sinister. If he is trying to be funny, maybe we just can’t laugh at Hitler – although this is not the first such attempt. The set, too, is designed very skilfully – by Hannah Danson, with lighting by Simon Jackson – to allow out-of-sight scenes to play and it amplifies the darkness of the era.

In the closing scene, Anna brings forward one more coincidence. Freud died (at a place near ‘here’- Hampstead) in September 1939. Hitler ‘lived a little longer’.

VERMIN

Park Theatre

★★★★

“plays on our fears at several levels”

VERMIN

Park Theatre

Reviewed on 12th September 2025

by Louise Sibley

Photography by Michael Parker

Previously reviewed at this venue:

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DR FREUD WILL SEE YOU NOW, MRS HITLER

Upstairs at the Gatehouse

★★★★

“As an insight into the lives of both protagonists, it is a very worthwhile evening.”