GETTING THROUGH IT
Old Vic
★★★★★
“profoundly touching, yet disarmingly humorous”
As the lights dimmed at The Old Vic, we entered not just a theatre, but a sanctuary for the soul. The audience sat in quiet anticipation, as if awaiting words from an old friend. Michael Rosen walked into a pool of warm light, holding a stack of papers like a weathered diary. With clean, crystalline clarity, he began—and we were immediately, effortlessly ushered into his world.
Getting Through It is a bill of monologues and poetry — fragments of memory, love, and survival stitched together through Rosen’s voice. This world is built not on spectacle, but on profound simplicity — a warm stage, a glass of water, a chair. This minimalism gave every word space to breathe. When he said, “Death is not the problem. Grief is,” the silence in the room felt deeply understanding.
Yet this was not a heavy-hearted lament. Though Rosen spoke of losing his son Eddie, he filled the journey with light, everyday details. Small memories of Eddie’s childhood — ordinary moments — began to glow in his telling.
These details become the very architecture of memory, constantly reverberating through time. The “orange head” joke found its touching resolution in Eddie’s Joke Book. Every person who crossed paths with Eddie gently pulled us back in time, leaving us quietly reflecting on “how time flies.” Laughter flowed easily throughout, and tears fell freely — grief rooted deeply in the soil of his story, yet offered not as a burden, but as a landscape to walk through.
The second half of the show detailed his near-fatal battle with COVID-19 — a stunning act of emotional alchemy. It was profoundly touching, yet disarmingly humorous. We must hold in reverence those who can transform pain into humour, and revere even more those who remember every soul that has passed through their life. His depiction of the care provided by medical staff was rendered with microscopic tenderness. He immerses us completely in the terrifying reality of a body that no longer belongs to itself, where the captured kindness of caregivers becomes the most touching — the most human — softness imaginable.
Getting Through It — by Michael Rosen — is, ultimately, a definitive argument for the power of theatre. The strongest stories need no elaborate sets — just a master storyteller and a space for collective reflection. Rosen has a rare gift: he gathers scattered fragments of life and weaves them together until, in a single moment of time and space, they meet, cycle, return, and resonate.
This is more than a storytelling masterpiece — it is a masterclass in how to tell a life. In his words, and in the shared quiet of the theatre, lives and moments find their eternal echo.
GETTING THROUGH IT
Old Vic the UK Tour continues
Reviewed on 19th October 2025
by Portia Yuran Li
Previously reviewed at this venue:
MARY PAGE MARLOWE | ★★★★ | October 2025
THE BRIGHTENING AIR | ★★★★ | April 2025
A CHRISTMAS CAROL | ★★★★★ | November 2024
THE REAL THING | ★★★★ | September 2024
MACHINAL | ★★★★ | April 2024
JUST FOR ONE DAY | ★★★★ | February 2024
