The Height of the Storm

by Florian Zeller

seen at Wyndhams Theatre on 18 October 2018

Jonathan Kent directs Jonathan Pryce as André and Eileen Atkins as Madeleine, with Amanda Drew and Anna Madeley as their daughters Anne and Elise in Zeller's new play, in which he again addresses themes of love, loss, memory and grief. The translation is by Christopher Hampton , and the set is designed by Anthony Ward - each in their own way excellent.

In an ageing writer's country house (or at least, a house outside Paris), in which shelves overloaded with books to an impossible height dominate several visible walls, Anne is trying to gain her father's attention, but he seems lost in a reverie staring out through the kitchen windows to the garden beyond. We soon conclude that he is recently widowed and possibly succumbing to dementia - there is talk of resolving 'the situation' and realising that new arrangements must be made.

Three Days in the Country

by Patrick Marber based on A Month in the Country by Ivan Turgenev

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 21 October 2015

Directed by Patrick Marber and designed by Mark Thompson, this version of Turgenev's play stars Amanda Drew as Natalya, John Light as Arkady, John Simm as Rakitin, Lily Sacofsky as Vera and Mark Gatiss as Shpigelsky.

The arrival of a young tutor at a Russian provincial country house triggers various crises amongst people who have been living together without formally acknowledging their feelings for a very long time. Arkady married Natalya on impulse - his friend Rakitin was with him when he first saw her, and wishes that he had acted first. Now he is a visitor to the estate, hardly able to bear being there but unable to keep away. Both Natalya and her ward Vera fall for the new tutor, and meanwhile there are subplots in which an unprepossessing neighbour wishes to marry Vera, while the doctor Shpigelsky makes an extraordinary proposal to a spinster in the household.