by Mike Bartlett
seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 11 September 2025
James Macdonald directs Hattie Morahan as Ruth, Sam Troughton as her partner Lip, Nadia Parkes as her "ex-step-daughter" Millie, Terique Jarrett as her partner Femi and Jonathan Slinger as the neighbouring farmer Tony in Mike Bartlett's new play Juniper Blood.
Ruth and Lip are trying to live a sustainable life on Lip's family farm, which Ruth has clearly saved from being sold or broken up - Lip, something of an unworldly idealist, was clearly unable to manage on his own. Millie and Femi, visiting from the city, provide skewering generational and urban/rural barbs which indicate that Ruth is not necessarily a saintly figure, while Tony in turn satirises the eco-pastoralist ideals Ruth and Lip embody, while dealing with his own profoundly distressing recent widowhood.
The play, designed by ULTZ, is set out of doors - the program contains a long essay on the significance of farm settings in plays. There is a grassy field (real grass: how is it kept flourishing?) and sharp daylight turning to dusk at the end of the first act. The tensions and discussions are, it is claimed, inflected rather differently when set outside, rather than (for. example) in a farmhouse kitchen such as would more normally suit a theatre.
There is plenty of scope for tension as the characters reveal their priorities and prejudices. Is sustainable farming economically possible? Is idealism viable at any cost? Can simmering cross-purposes be resolved or will the antagonisms just get worse? These are big issues at both the personal and the societal level, and the play attempts to embrace them all.
While the setting is arresting and the actors excellent, the play itself constantly runs the risk of being too wordy and preachy, raising important issues at the expense of dramatic credibility and narrative drive. The painful dynamic between Ruth and Millie is hilarious and toe-curling at once, but after the first act it recedes into the background, receiving only a slight flicker of interest towards the end. Likewise Tony's interaction with Ruth, prominent in the second act, once having served its turn, receives no further attention. Meanwhile in the third act there is an astonishing disquisition by Femi on the nexus and ultimate triumph of capitalism which is more of a lecture than anything else: only exceptional skill can bring this sort of thing off without intensely irritating an audience (Terique Jarrett succeeds in this).
Sociasl satire, family drama, echoes of Chekhov - even trees being bulldozed, let alone the personal dynamics - and state-of-the-world polemics make for a heady but not entirely successful blend: fascinating to watch in such a well-conceived and acted production, and yet not completely convincing.
