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.

Ellen Terry with Eileen Atkins

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 21 January 2016

The great actress Ellen Terry began touring with a series of lectures on Shakespeare in the latter part of her career. She drew her material from her vast experience of acting many of the major female parts. 

Eileen Atkins has selected and arranged excerpts from these lectures both to show the sorts of things that Ellen Terry discussed, and to showcase her own considerable acting talent. Thus we see Atkins's impression of Terry's analysis and performance of a number of celebrated roles - Beatrice, Rosalind (a part she regretted that she had never actually played), Desdemona, Viola, Juliet. No matter that Terry was in her sixties when she began lecturing, and that Eileen Atkins is now over eighty - the delivery is sharp, the verse speaking assured, and the revelation of character through the recitation of mere excerpts of speeches is fascinating and rewarding.

As a tribute from one great actress to another, looking back over a century, and as a tribute by Ellen Terry to her beloved Shakespeare, this was a marvellous use of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.