Dance of Death

by August Strindberg

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 4 March 2026

Richard Eyre adapted Strindberg's bleak play Dance of Death and directs Will Keen as Edgar, Lisa Dillon as his wife Alice and Geoffrey Streatfeild as Kurt her cousin in an intense and yet at times darkly comic production.

Edgar and Alice have been married for almost twenty-five years; he is a captain on an island which is enduring quarantine due to an epidemic (in this version, the 1918/19 flu epidemic, though the play was written in 1900, and in the original the couple's social isolation is entirely of their own making). The marriage is miserable, though one senses a weary sort of camaraderie beneath the constant sniping and bickering. It's all very well playing games of that sort (and it has become a sturdy theatrical tradition with echoes in the work of Albee, Pinter and others), but there is always a risk of overplaying one's hand, or of losing control due to unforeseen circumstances.

Cue the arrival of Kurt, whom Edgar purports to hold responsible for "trapping" him into marrying Alice, and who is uneasily drawn into the toxic atmosphere through sympathising with his cousin, unaware that his own now dissolved marriage has also been contaminated by Edgar's meddling. And furthermore, Edgar is actually unwell, though it is hard to tell whether he is using his illness as ammunition, or is genuinely running the risk of incapacitation. In this production Will Keen gives a mesmeric performance of draining physicality as he spasms with heart failure and veers between fighting for control with all his military experience of fierce disciple, and succumbing to the terror of dying. His grunts and facial tics are astonishing manifestations of years of repression as much as of physical decline, and it turns out to be foolish of Alice to imagine that now is the time to gain the upper hand.

Lisa Dillon's Alice, fluttering with self-deprecation but usually able to hold her own, exhibits mounting desperation while at the same time revealing a morbid dependence. At one level this is the classic dilemma of the victim of an abusive relationship, but paradoxically here she remains unbowed and in a strange way unbeaten. Kurt's stolid diffidence finally fails to protect him from the fireworks, but after he has left Alice and Edgar are still contemplating their approaching silver wedding anniversary.

At such close quarters the play could have been stultifying and melodramatic, but in the hands of these actors, and with Richard Eyre's inspired realisation that there is a disquieting vein of comedy running through the misery, it was thrilling to watch and horribly fascinating. 

The Bay at Nice

by David Hare

seen at the Menier Chocolate Factory on 13 April 2019

Richard Eyre directs Penelope Wilton as Valentina Nrovka, Ophelia Lovibond as her daughter Sophia, David Rintoul as Sophia's lover Peter and Martin Hutson as an assistant curator at the Hermitage in this play about authenticating a possible Matisse painting left to the museum by an emigre aristocrat, entwined with the difficult relationship between mother and daughter.

The situation is rather artificial, Sophia having thought that the occasion of her mother's invitation to the museum to see the painting might be the occasion for announcing her intention to leave her husband and children and live with the much older and widowed Peter, for which she needs funds for the divorce proceedings. This allows us to see Valentina from a number of different angles - impatient with museums, dismissive of much modern art, contemptuous of modern ideas of freedom and self-fulfilment, and therefore extremely abrasive with her daughter. Behind this steely exterior, expressed in well-turned speeches of frightening social and moral put-downs (rather like Lady Bracknell in deadly earnest) is a history of repressed anguish and unacknowledged disappointment - Valentina was a gay young thing in Paris, a model and possibly lover of Matisse, shut out by the Master's admission that he had no time for love, and determined, with a baby to look after, to return to Russia to give order and structure to her life no matter the cost.

My Name is Lucy Barton

by Elizabeth Strout adapted by Rona Munro

seen at the Bridge Theatre on 4 February 2019

Laura Linney stars in Richard Eyre's production of this play adapted from Elizabeth Strout's novel of the same name. She had a very successful run at the Bridge last year, which was sold out before I felt motivated to see it, and so has agreed to a short revival this year.

It's a demanding 90-minute monologue in which Lucy's story, and her reflections on the nature of story telling and the need to recognise what one's own story is, is revealed as she recalls the nine weeks she had to spend in hospital after an appendectomy, and the difficult reunion between herself and her mother who decided to visit her in the hospital (a first visit from rural Illinois to New York).

Long Day's Journey into Night

by Eugene O'Neill

seen at Wynndhams Theatre on 18 February 2018

Richard Eyre directs Jeremy Irons as James Tyrone, Lesley Manville as his wife Mary, Rory Keenan as Jamie and Matthew Beard as Edmund, the two Tyrone sons, and Jessica Regan as Cathleen the maid, in a production designed by Rob Howell.

The play, loosely autobiographical, takes place in the Tyrone's summer house on the day in which Edmund is told by the family doctor that he has consumption. But both his brother and his father have half suspected this (indeed, he may himself have been aware of the likelihood); the menfolk are furthermore confronting the fact that Mary is incurably addicted to morphine, having been prescribe it many years before after Edmund's difficult birth.

Such a bald summary hardly begins to account for the play's power, nor for the unremitting portrayal of self-deception and mutual recrimination that unfolds before us as the various members of the family try to maintain a veneer of normality in the face of long years of denial, repressed anger, and tortured love.

Little Eyolf

by Henrik Ibsen

seen at the Alemida Theatre on 17 December 2015

The play is directed by Richard Eyre, in a new adaptation by the director based on a literal translation by Anne and Karin Bamborough. It features Jolyon Coy as Alfred Allmers, Lydia Leonard as his wife Rita, Eve Ponsonby as his sister Asta, Sam Hazeldine as Bjarne Borgheim, Eileen Walsh as the Woman (the so-called 'Rat Wife'), and Adam Greaves-Neal (in this performance) as Eyolf (the son of Alfred and Rita). The set is designed by Tim Hatley and lit by Peter Mumford.

At eighty intense minutes, played without a break, this is a distillation of an already comparatively short play in which a married couple, drifting apart in unhappiness and recrimination even before the catastrophe which concludes the first act, are stretched to breaking point by the accidental drowning of their crippled young son Eyolf.