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Synopsis Inspired by The Oresteia and written just before the outbreak of the Second World War this is a story of sin, redemption and the burden of responsibility. After eight years absence, Harry returns to the ancestral home to celebrate his mother's birthday. Tormented by a dark secret, he confides in Aunt Agatha only to discover that the family too has its own hidden demons.
The Donmar’s revival of TS Eliot’s rarely-performed verse drama The Family Reunion opened this week (25 November 2008, previews from 20 November), forming the centrepiece of the Donmar’s TS Eliot festival (See News, 18 Jul 2008).
After eight years absence, Harry returns to the ancestral home to celebrate his mother's birthday. Tormented by a dark secret, he confides in Aunt Agatha only to discover that the family too have its own hidden demons.
The overnight critics were warm in their reception of Herrin's "thrillingly assured revival" of Eliot’s “infuriating modern masterpiece”. West’s “tormented” Harry and Wilton’s “seductively inscrutable” Agatha led an “impeccable” cast, and despite one assessment of the text as “a curio that isn't likely to re-enter the repertoire”, it nevertheless provided most critics with an ample reminder of Eliot’s abundant talents. Special mention too went to Bunny Christie's ambitious country house set, “exquisitely lit” by Rick Fisher.
Michael Coveney on Whatsonstage.com (four stars) – “Eliot himself thought that Harry was an insufferable prig, but West makes something really moving of his insistence that he is living a nightmare and that the rest of the family is weighed down with the triviality of everyday life. But his mother Amy, Lady Monchesney, is similarly afflicted with grief when it emerges that her husband was plotting to kill her while carrying on an affair with her sister, Agatha. Amy and Agatha, played respectively by a red-eyed, tremulous Gemma Jones and a chilling, uncompromised Penelope Wilton, bring a great undertow of anger and sadness to the play … Bunny Christie’s set, lit with magical harshness by Rick Fisher, is a high panelled mansion with broken windows and secret doorways, a grim kingdom of wasted lives and dreams … The Donmar has reiterated what the RSC revealed nine years ago in Adrian Noble’s revival: the play’s an infuriating modern masterpiece.”
Sam Marlowe in The Times (three stars) - “Mesmeric and sometimes maddening, it draws on classical tragedy to explore existential crisis. And while Eliot’s slow deliberation and dense poetry veer between hypnotic and soporific, Jeremy Herrin’s production is absorbingly atmospheric and acted with such intensity that it conjures a quiet horror … West makes Eliot’s tormented, occasionally hectoring Harry rivetingly watchable, showing us not just the suffering man but the bewildered child who never felt quite able to fulfil the expectations of his emotionally exigeant mama … Amid the anguish and the ghostly visitations, though, there is wit, a tinkling socially comic counterpoint to the drama’s broken glass. In particular, Una Stubbs as Harry’s Aunt Ivy is daintily delicious, bemused by the strange events and far less interested in probing their mysteries than in sampling Amy’s birthday cake. The play’s evocation of a world beyond our own is fascinating. It’s worth enduring the longueurs.”
Dominic Cavendish in the Daily Telegraph (four stars) – “Jeremy Herrin's thrillingly assured revival could scarcely better argue the case for Eliot's hard-edged drama to be recognised as a jewel of the pre-war theatrical canon. Although borrowing the robes of country house drama and classical Greek tragedy, it's far from fusty and moth-eaten. The use of language remains bracingly experimental - ranging from amusingly stiff drawing-room chatter, past staccato choric outbursts, into realms of high-flown abstraction … The ensemble playing is uniformly excellent, down to the three deathly pale little boys who burst into view as the avenging furies, creepily brandishing butterfly nets. Gemma Jones is on spectral and formidable form as the indomitable matriarchal Amy. Penelope Wilton brings a calm watchfulness and sorrowful sagacity to the role of Agatha, who is handmaiden to her nephew's rapt, rhapsodic self-expiation. Una Stubbs excels as Ivy, the dottier of his aunts, and William Gaunt lends his starchy uncle Charles a wonderful unblinking bafflement, like some dead-eyed moose-head in a forgotten baronial corridor.”
Maddy Costa in the Guardian (three stars) - “This isn't one play but three - an intense revenge drama taking in Greek tragedy, a conventional potboiler and a satire on mid-20th-century country-house drama … One of its characters, Violet, ceaselessly proclaims her inability to understand a word that anyone is saying, a feeling some of the audience might share. Yet this is a play written for a West End audience, and beneath myriad obfuscations lies a discernible, if not quite gripping, plot … The Family Reunion isn't easy to play, but Jeremy Herrin's cast is impeccable. Una Stubbs' twittering Ivy and Anna Carteret's opinionated Violet are perfectly unbearable; Penelope Wilton's Agatha is seductively inscrutable. In the past, reviewers have thought Harry a prig, but in Samuel West's performance he is a sympathetically tormented soul searching for peace. Ultimately, the play is a curio that isn't likely to re-enter the repertoire - but one that leaves you more in awe of Eliot the poet than ever.”
Nicholas de Jongh in the Evening Standard (four stars) - “The Donmar launches its TS Eliot season by reminding us what a magical, entrancing experience The Family Reunion can be, even in an emotionally under-powered production such as this by Jeremy Herrin … West’s Eliot-like Harry goes through a form of expiation, but too often appears glacially perplexed rather than tormented. Only when the Furies, whose fearful form has been brilliantly reinvented by Herrin as childhood revenants, rise up before him does he lose his cool to useful effect. Miss Wilton’s spell-binding performance as the voluptuous, anguished Aunt Agatha, opens the door to the family’s secret and so liberates Harry from the family’s curse. She alone takes The Family Reunion to its thrilling, high plane of metaphysical mystery.”
Is there sobbing in your chimney? Are there ghosts at your table? Are you aware that death will come as a mild surprise, a momentary shudder in a vast room? Welcome to the spooky world of T S Eliot’s The Family Reunion, a verse play to which you may easily become averse despite its incontrovertible theatricality.
Harry Monchesney (Samuel West), the heir to a cold northern fastness called Wishwood, returns home like Orestes after eight years away pursued by the Furies of grief, guilt and anxiety over the death of his wife. She disappeared over the side of a ship in the Mediterranean. As in the case of the late tycoon Robert Maxwell, it’s not clear if she slipped or was pushed.
Eliot himself thought that Harry was an insufferable prig, but West makes something really moving of his insistence that he is living a nightmare and that the rest of the family is weighed down with the triviality of everyday life. But his mother Amy, Lady Monchesney, is similarly afflicted with grief when it emerges that her husband was plotting to kill her while carrying on an affair with her sister, Agatha.
Amy and Agatha, played respectively by a red-eyed, tremulous Gemma Jones and a chilling, uncompromised Penelope Wilton, bring a great undertow of anger and sadness to the play, while the chorus of aunts and uncles – a quartet of Cluedo characters played with icy precision and telling variety by Anna Carteret, Una Stubbs, Paul Shelley and William Gaunt -- voice the banalities that Harry objects to, re-grouping occasionally into a transfigured bunch of morbid commentators speaking in unison.
So we have Harry’s homecoming and Amy’s birthday party. The melancholic menace is further layered by the lost romance between Harry and the trapped spinsterish distant cousin, Mary (Hattie Morahan), an agent of childhood memories which prompts director Jeremy Herrin’s masterstroke: the playing of the Furies as three identical children and a fourth, older girl, representing the wiped out, sinister ghost of Harry’s dead wife.
Bunny Christie’s set, lit with magical harshness by Rick Fisher, is a high panelled mansion with broken windows and secret doorways, a grim kingdom of wasted lives and dreams. Harry’s two brothers are both involved in accidents offstage and never turn up. The local policeman (Phil Cole) and doctor (Christopher Benjamin) represent “normality” but Eliot’s nagging point is that sorrow seeps everywhere, and no-one is saved. The Donmar has reiterated what the RSC revealed nine years ago in Adrian Noble’s revival: the play’s an infuriating modern masterpiece.
The play is perhaps a difficut one in so far as it is terribly wordy with much of it in prose, so I know I flagged during the first half as it seemed, at times, to drone on. The second act seemed to me to be much better. However, in the hands, or should I say mouths, of the likes of Gemma Jones, Paul Shelley, Anna Cateret, Christopher Benjamin, William Guant and the sublime Penelope Wilton it became a masterclass in acting, even if the story, at times, was a little hard to follow I think I got the gist of what Eliot was driving at? I ought not forget to mention Samuel West too who is a revelation, what a fine actor he has become - a chip off the old block there. And also dear ol' Una Stubbs who turns in a good performance as a dotty sister. I wondered, afterwards, whether it would have been better if Eliot hadn't just written it as a straight play instead of part prose with a "greek" chorus, but then if he had done, so much of the dramatic and mysteriousness of the piece would have been lost. It just means we, the audience, have to work a bit harder to enjoy the play, but it is worth the effort. - rds
03 Jan 09
The cast is superb. The atmosphere is also wonderful, but in the end it is a boring play. - Manos
07 Dec 08
Acting superb so my measly two stars are for the play. The previous reviewer's right - b***ks but so elegantly so. The Donmar throws everything at it - brilliant costume, hair, lighting, noises, effects [ the furies!] but it all left me cold. - Lynette
29 Nov 08
Thought this play was extremely good. Samuel West's character Harry shone above the rest. Loved the set design and sound effects. Felt like you were in the room. The atmosphere was very intense. A highly reccomended production. Go to see it if you can. Amazing stuff. - Maria
26 Nov 08
Knockout cast, sensation production, but the play is a load of utter bollocks! No wonder T.S. Eliot went out of fashion as the actors squirt verbal diarrhea to rival Nina in Constantine's play within a play, in THE SEAGULL. Still an amazing experience although I don't think the three drunk girls ejected during the first act last night, thought so. Una Stubbs's hairdo alone is worth the ticket price. Go see. - joesmith
Re-opened in 1992. Seats 254. 1999 - Ambassador Theatre Group takes over from the Associated Capital Theatres as the landlord of the Donmar Warehouse. 2002 - Michael Grandage succeeds Sam Mendes as Artistic Director of the Donmar. Nick Frankfort succeeds Caro Newling as Executive Producer.
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