The Late Henry Moss

Synopsis

Set near the Mexican border, The Lat Henry Moss sees family secrets revealed as two brothers return home after a long absence to confront each other, their violent past and the death of their father. Fluctuating between the present and the past, Henry comes to life and re-enacts events leading up to his mysterious and exotic death.

Our Review:

20 January 2006

After the polemical state-of-the-American-nation metaphor of Sam Shepard’s most recent play The God of Hell from 2004 that received its British premiere at the Donmar Warehouse last year, the US playwright's The Late Henry Moss from four years earlier is now reaching the Almeida stage, where artistic director Michael Attenborough is pursuing a programme that combines European with regular American work.

The play is a refreshing return to the “other”, more familiar Shepard: a world of long-estranged brothers who are suddenly reunited to an inevitably warring result in which old resentments are stoked up and reignited, in the manner of True West (one of his best-ever plays) but laced through with a lacerating wit and a bracing engagement with its characters' scarred, scared lives.

The play originally premiered in 2000 in the author’s own San Francisco production starring Nick Nolte and Sean Penn as the brothers. I ...

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Latest User Review

195.82.123.181) - 18 February 2006:

To be honest, I am not really a fan of testosterone-driven drama like this, despite the fact that much of Shepard's dialogue here crackles, and there is clearly a strong connection between the writer and his theme of the warring brothers and their drunken loser of a father. Michael Attenborough's production is superb: atmospheric, pacey, tense. Brendan Coyne's older brother and Trevor Cooper as his walking dead Dad could scarcely be bettered. Andrew Lincoln as the tortured younger brother didn't work for me: I thought him posturing, self-indulgent, only intermittently convincing. Two remarkable supporting performances steal the show: Simon Gregor's good-hearted, effete Hispanic neighbour, and Jason Watkins' gormless cab driver....both are sensational. Flaminia Cinque as the only woman gets alot of mileage out of an underwritten role, maybe more symbol than true character. All in all, a rewarding evening and a strong piece of theatre. I just wish I'd enjoyed it a bit more....

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