Brian Cox and Patricia Clarkson. Photo by Johan Persson.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill – Wyndham’s Theatre, London

Eugene O’Neill’s most famous and successful play has a reputation as a gruelling watch, spanning nearly three and a half hours, and tracking the misery inherent in a family which closely resembles that of the author. But the best stage actors cannot keep away, drawn by two leads that are among the best parts available. The latest in the long line are Brian Cox as James Tyrone and Patricia Clarkson as Mary Tyrone, who are not an intuitive pairing but turn out to be brilliant. Jeremy Herrin’s production is set in a empty New England holiday let designed by Lizzie Clachan, which has never provided the home Mary has sought all her life. Cox’s plays James as a bear of a man, full of the actor’s charisma that drew Mary to him when she was young, but also of desperation, which breaks through when he picks up a whisky glass. He commands the stage with an actorly presence which carries echoes of Olivier, one of whose last great stage performances this was. Tyrone’s failure to play the great roles he craved, having settled for the easy money, also carries interesting echoes when spoken by Cox, whose career has veered away from the stage.

Tyrone is the still-living embodiment of a dead actorly tradition, but his wife Mary is a ghost. Addicted to morphine, she has been pushed into the background by the demands of her husband’s touring life, her own life subsumed. Patricia Clarkson is simply brilliant in the role, giving Mary a directness and realism that chills and moves. The play’s final scenes, where she describes the religious vocation she gave up to marry Tyrone, is a remarkable climax. The play’s other characters include the couple’s sons – alcoholic Jamie (Daryl McCormack) and Edmund (Laurie Kynaston), ill with tuberculosis. Jamie hovers on the brink of self-destruction, barely in denial any more, although McCormack’s portrayal sometimes lacks the unpredictable edge the character needs. As Edmund, Kynaston is vulnerable and angry. Louisa Harland sparkles in the small part of the maid, Cathleen, who she fleshes into an unmistakable character in her few scenes.

O’Neill’s play is by no means perfect – some suspension of disbelief is needed to take these people at face value – but it is fascinatingly bravura writing, which fuses the personal and the political in the tradition of Ibsen (who O’Neill acknowledges in an aside). Long Day’s Journey raises issue which, shocking in the 1950s, remain current – women’s control over their lives, the US medical system, opiates, depression, failure and families. Herrin’s production is an excellent account.

Sarah Richardson. Photo by Jacob Cox.

Sun Bear by Sarah Richardson – Park Theatre, London

Published by Plays International.

‘Sun Bear’, written and performed by Sarah Richardson, is an excellent piece of writing. Richardson, playing Katy, has nothing but an office desk and chair, and a pot of pens, and she is focused on the latter. At first, she seems amusingly furious with her work colleagues over small things – pen stealing, lunch orders, social invitations. This makes a lot of sense – after all, who hasn’t wanted to tell their colleagues what they really think of them. But we soon begin to realise that Katy’s anger crosses the blurry boundaries of socially acceptable behaviour, and that she is trying, and failing, to escape the impact of an coercive relationship. Although she has left her abusive boyfriend, fear continues to fill her head and haunt her life.

Richardson’s performance and writing work together exceptionally well. She draws the audience into her rollercoaster story immediately and keeps them on the edge of their seats for an hour, with nothing but the occasional lighting change. Not a word is wasted. She is very funny, but her writing is disciplined and everything in the service of the story. Richardson gives a gripping and entirely convincing account of what is like to live with someone who controls every aspect of your life. The play’s title refers to a species of small bear which is vicious when eventually roused, a metaphor left to do its work unexplained. ‘Sun Bear’ is just Sarah Richardson: no creatives are credited apart from the lighting operator. It is a serious achievement, a quality work of great promise. Richardson has won awards already, and will surely win more. 

Alys Williams. Photo by Ant Robling

The Light House by Alys Williams – Park Theatre, London

Published at Plays International.

The Light House is written and performed by Alys Williams, who trained at the École Jacques LeCoq clown school. It is her debut play, developed through a programme at Leeds Playhouse, and shows considerable promise. The piece is highly personal, dealing with the suicidal depression of someone close to her, and leaves some of the audience in tears. However, Williams’ achievement is to make her experience of trying to care for her friend and navigate hostile healthcare systems involving, and a positive collective experience. The purpose of the show is, she says, to be together for an evening and deal with things we usually have to handle while “adulting on our own”. Audience involvement, which Willams handles lightly and with great charm, plays a constant role, filling in the missing characters in her story.

Williams explains her experiences through the metaphor of the ‘man overboard’ procedure on ships: shouting and whistling to raise the alarm, throwing a lifebuoy and then pointing for as long as it takes. This theme is restated rather too often during the show, but acts as a neat metaphor for the terrifying experience of trying to save someone who is drowning in despair. The show, directed by Andrea Heaton, includes moments of clever physicality, including the use of an anglepoise lamp as a puppet version of Williams’ friend, and a brief sequence of expressive and moving clowning. A simple wooden box set by Emma Williams creates a neat range of spaces. Alys Williams is an immensely likeable performer, with a rare ability to hold an audience. ‘The Light House’ is focused on her personal experience, but would gain significance with the addition of some wider context (for example, the show raises, but does not answer, many questions about the Irish healthcare system). Her talent for physical expression could also be used more extensively. However, as a first time playwright Williams has a success on her hands, and her progress is clearly worth tracking.   

Chris Thorpe. Photo by Andreas J Etter.

A Family Business by Chris Thorpe – Omnibus Theatre, London

The Anthropocene Era, the Age of Humans when the future of the planet is geologically determined by the actions of our species, is now widely agreed to have begun at 05:29:21 on July 16, 1945, with detonation of the first atomic bomb at Alamagordo, New Mexico. Since the dawn of the nuclear era, nothing has been the same, bombs have increased in power and number. There are now around 13,000 nuclear warheads in existence, belonging to the world’s nine nuclear states, and most have the explosive power of 100 Hiroshima bombs. The nuclear threat is constant, and the consequences of any one of these bombs ever being used are dire for humanity. Can we really live indefinitely with the dull, constant background threat of annihilation?

Chris Thorpe’s new show, A Family Business, developed with Rachel Chavkin and produced by China Plate with Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, opens up discussion about a subject most prefer to not even think about. Using his trademark conversational approach, Thorpe draws the audience into his own journey of discovery which began after meeting a woman working for International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, ICAN has successfully campaigned to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. As a result of their actions, a coalition of countries from the Global South has united to deliver an international agreement that makes nuclear weapons illegal. The downside: no nuclear state has signed up.

By focusing on current, and in many ways successful, anti-nuclear action, Thorpe centres his piece on hope for change. His narrative sections are woven together with a dramatisation of the negotiations – bribery, threats, and coded discussions about nations that take place behind the scenes of international agreements. Three performers, Andrea Quirbach as the lead ICAN negotiator, Greg Barnett as the representative of a US-style power, and Efé Agwele from an African nation, talk behind the scenes. From a personal perspective, none supports the existence of nuclear weapons, but as diplomats their views are neither here nor there. They play the game that keeps the nuclear status quo intact, as though humanity were not ultimately a single family.

It is a good thing Thorpe has identified hope about the despair, because the show pulls no punches on the consequences and probability – certainty even – that nuclear war will one day take place, through accident or design. Thorpe draws the audience into cheerful conversation that reveals our general lack of knowledge about the greatest threat to our existence. He uses a web simulator to show how little of our world would remain if anyone ever pressed the button. A Family Business is engagingly performed, and directed by Claire O’Reilly, under a swag of cables designed by Eleanor Field. The show would benefit from editing in places, as the diplomatic drama has a tendency to drift. However, Quirbach, Agwele and Barnett all give nuanced, believable performances as ordinary people grappling with astonishingly high stakes. But, as Thorpe points out, the only places anything ever changes is in rooms of ordinary people, talking. His show is urgent theatre, engaging with something so big that no-one knows where to start. By bringing this discussion to the stage, he makes a powerful case for looking the threat in the face, rather than hiding our heads in the sand.