The Confessions, National Theatre review — a tough, moving portrait of a woman’s life

The Confessions

National Theatre (Lyttelton), London

“I’m not interesting,” says the small white-haired woman as she steps on to the Lyttelton stage. “I’m an old lady. What’s interesting about me?”

Alexander Zeldin begs to differ. In his beautiful new play The Confessions, he traces the contours of an ordinary life — inspired by that of his own mother, whose journey took her from Australia to Oxford and through the turbulent social changes of the late 20th century. It’s more than interesting.

Zeldin is known for his Inequalities trilogy — Beyond Caring; Love; Faith, Hope and Charity — superb works that used painstaking low-key naturalism to express the experience of people living through austerity. What marked them out was their compassionate depiction of dignity and care in the face of hardship: I will never forget the man in Love tenderly washing his elderly mother’s hair in the kitchen sink of their temporary accommodation.

The Confessions (on European tour) emerges as a cousin to those works: a different approach but underpinned by the same humanity. During lockdown, Zeldin talked for hours to his mother, piecing together the turning points in her life. From that he has crafted a decades-spanning piece that honours those women, born during the war, who experienced first-hand the struggle for self-definition and equality. Not that Alice (Amelda Brown), a frank, self-deprecating woman, would think of it like that.

We watch that life unfold. The younger Alice (Eryn Jean Norvill) is shepherded into a brittle 1950s marriage to Graham, who soon becomes controlling. Escaping that to attend university in Melbourne, she encounters the snake-pit of academic rivalry, the grisly realities of chauvinism and snobbery disguised as liberalism.

There are some very funny scenes here — a toe-curling university lecture rings all too true. But then there is the central event of the show: a shocking sexual assault. Both this, and Alice’s eventual response, are superbly handled — not graphic, but emotionally devastating. Again it’s the truth of what people carry with them that comes through. And when Alice finally finds her life partner — Jacob, an Austrian Jewish man with his own scarred history — you feel like cheering.

It could be sentimental. It isn’t. It’s funny, tough and moving. Directing, Zeldin treads a careful line, playing truth against artifice. The stage account is studded with repetitions and contrasts. Dining tables become key settings: the one in Alice’s childhood home at which her aspirations are clipped; the one she shares with her domineering husband; the one over which she admits her feelings to Jacob. Stagehands push sets around; characters bring on props — it’s clear that this is Zeldin’s theatrical version of lives lived.

But, crucially, the performances feel completely truthful. Joe Bannister is excellent as two differently abusive men, Pamela Rabe plays Alice’s conventional mother but also a ferocious feminist, Brian Lipson is immensely touching as Jacob. Norvill quietly invests the young Alice with a growing clarity, watched over judiciously by Brown. And Lilit Lesser plays Zeldin’s onstage representative — a truculent, demanding teenager. It’s a confession from him as much as anything.

★★★★☆

To November 4, nationaltheatre.org.uk

Clyde’s

Donmar Warehouse, London

Alice is among several characters on the London stage battling against the confines into which life has pegged them. In Clyde’s, a lowly truck-stop diner in backwater Pennsylvania, Rafael, Letitia and Jason are trying to put their prison past behind them. In a soulless kitchen (designed in brilliantly drab detail by Frankie Bradshaw) they slap together sandwiches for hungry drivers they never see, ruled over by Clyde, a woman who could give a kitchen devil a run for its money (Gbemisola Ikumelo, spectacularly scary). One step out of line, she warns them, and they will be back in the gutter. But their guru-like mentor, Montrellous, has other ideas. He feeds them notions of perfect sandwiches: dream combinations garnished with hope.

In a sense Lynn Nottage’s gorgeous, warm-hearted play picks up from her Pulitzer-winning Sweat: again we’re with characters sidelined by society. One — Jason — even features in both. Again racial, social and sexual tensions course through; again there’s a deep political subtext. But Clyde’s has its own mix of mysticism and mischief. Both Clyde and Montrellous have an otherworldly quality to them. Frequently we wonder where this kitchen — a curious liminal space sandwiched between hope and despair — really is.

Lynette Linton’s joyous staging keeps us on that knife-edge, sprinkling surreal moments into the action. Metaphors that could land heavily are delivered with a pinch of salt, especially by Giles Terera, whose superb depiction of the mysterious Montrellous is perfectly pitched. We’re never quite sure if we believe his stories, yet he holds everyone in his spell as he composes culinary masterpieces and coaxes his charges towards self-belief. A sandwich, he says, invites “invention and collaboration”.

Following his guidance, Nottage assembles a handful of damaged characters who gradually meld together into a perfect combination. That journey is beautifully traced by Linton, who has a gift for bringing characters to life in a way that makes it hard to part with them. Here, she has a terrific cast. Patrick Gibson’s Jason, as angry and miserable as a clenched fist, slowly melts; Sebastian Orozco’s impetuous, loveable Rafael finds his feet; Ronke Adékoluejo’s vibrant, defensive Letitia learns to trust. She is outstanding and this is a glorious, funny and touching production of a play that argues fiercely for rehabilitation, redemption and hope.

★★★★☆

To December 2, donmarwarehouse.com

Portia Coughlan

Almeida theatre, London

Portia Coughlan is not for moving on. Or, at least, she can’t. In Marina Carr’s 1996 play she lives, nominally, in the Irish midlands. But in reality, she’s displaced by grief — haunted by the drowning of her twin brother 15 years previously. Their 30th birthday has brought matters to a head: by 10am she’s already well down a bottle of brandy, snapping at her mild-mannered husband (Chris Walley), ignoring her children and treating gift-bearing visitors with indifference.

Carr’s play has taken on contemporary classic status. A no-holds-barred depiction of despair and a brutal takedown of small-town Ireland, it’s a Greek tragedy wrapped up in brooding Irish gothic and peppered with pitch-black comedy. Sordid revelations tumble out amid drab soft furnishings and sticky bar tables. The only thing flowing more freely than the booze is the vitriol, no one more practised at it than Portia’s vicious grandmother (Sorcha Cusack, splendidly malevolent).

Slinking through the middle of it all is Alison Oliver’s Portia, a woman so drenched with self-loathing, she’s barely there. Oliver’s performance, sullen, snarling and raw as bleeding steak, admirably rejects pity. Alex Eales’s set, for Carrie Cracknell’s atmospheric production, taps into her state of mind, slicing open the living room wall to reveal the rocky banks of the Belmont River to which she is drawn repeatedly. It’s a grim, unyielding watch: savagely funny in places; brutally bleak overall.

★★★☆☆

To November 18, almeida.co.uk