Synopsis John has never met anyone like Kay. When the moon is in the right phase, she is magnetic and amazingly alive. But when the darkness closes in, she is lost to another world, a world in which John does not belong. One man's struggle to love, support and live with someone suffering from a psychological condition is beautifully captured with humour and pathos in this extraordinary play by Mark Haddon, the author of The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night-Time and A Spot of Bother. World Premiere
Polar Bears, the playwriting debut of bestselling author Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time), opened at the Donmar Warehouse last night (6 April, previews from 1 April) where it continues until 22 May 2010.
Directed by Jamie Lloyd, the play depicts the struggles of John (Richard Coyle) to love, support and live with Kay (Jodhi May), a bi-polar sufferer. When the moon is in the right phase, she is magnetic and amazingly alive. But when the darkness closes in, she is lost to another world, a world in which John does not belong.
Whereas “Jamie Lloyd’s clever and outstandingly well acted production” was roundly praised, critical opinion was polarised regarding the success of Haddon’s narrative structure. Whilst some felt that its “out-of-chronological sequence” game-playing was “tricksy” and “irritatingly arty”, others praised the “back-and-forth jumps and juxtaposition” as “useful for a play that, like the heroine, is in two minds about what actually happens”.
Michael Coveney on Whatsonstage.com (four stars) – “Disturbing, intense, bizarre … Despite being a sort of case history, which could have been dull, it’s also theatrically spellbinding … The play jumps around in Jamie Lloyd’s clever and outstandingly well acted production, and it doesn’t aim for total narrative coherence. But nothing seems left out, or mysterious, by the end … In Jodhi May’s extraordinary performance, which is both impetuous and determined, brimming with spirit and joy, Kay comes across as a writer who can’t cope but who is also completely normal. Is she bipolar, manic or depressive? Probably a bit of all three, nothing too unusual … The rare ability to get inside someone completely else’s head was apparent in Haddon’s brilliant novel … He shows here that his writing talent has a theatrical dimension, too”
Paul Taylor in the Independent (three stars) – “Jamie Lloyd's vigorous, sometimes serio-joky, sometimes bruised and poetic production … Haddon proves that he can create comic dialogue that sometimes has an Alan Bennett ring; he can shape scenes so that they spring surprises; he can tell a story out-of-chronological-sequence … the play is at its best when it dramatises the terrible burden borne by people who love and care for bipolar sufferers … The problem, though, is that Haddon's play deals in faintly lurid extremities when the real dramatic interest in the condition lies, to my mind, in the greyer areas … Kay – played by Ms May with a keen feel for her excitability and hectic allure … Kay's ups and downs don't seem mutually defining … Instead, the highs are presented as a kind of possession, a take-over of the real Kay (whatever that is) by an irresponsible child.”
Michael Billington in the Guardian (three stars) – “Haddon's premise is fascinating: the difficulty of coping, on a domestic level, with mental illness … He captures very well the unpredictable nature of the central relationship: the highs are genuinely high, as when the couple engage in rhapsodic post-coital reminiscence, and the lows are terrifyingly low. What emerges strongly is Kay's periodic unreachability and the way she sees her bid for independence, as a children's author and illustrator, threatened by John's protective love: his very kindness, in a bitter irony, becomes a trigger for her depression … Haddon dramatises, with great confidence, a particular instance. His play falls apart only when it seeks to draw general conclusions … Grateful as I am for a play that is prepared to raise big issues, I feel that 90 minutes is a short time … Haddon is fortunate, however, in his interpreters. Jamie Lloyd stages the piece with exemplary clarity … Jodhi May also pulls off the difficult feat of suggesting Kay's rich potential for life as well as her hideous retreat into darkness … Richard Coyle manages to make John's tenacious decency dramatically compelling ... I emerged feeling that Haddon had hit on a very good idea for a play. But he tries to run an Olympic marathon before he has fully learned to walk.”
Charles Spencer in the Telegraph (two stars) – “Polar Bears seems to offer little more than facile despair and tricksy dramatic technique … Haddon keeps playing games … But the effect is curiously alienating, creating the suspicion that the dramatist is cruelly toying with both his characters and those sitting in the audience … Nevertheless the play undoubtedly makes some powerful points about mental illness … Jamie Lloyd’s production, staged on an atmospherically creepy set by Soutra Gilmour that conjures up some devastated mental institution, is undoubtedly powerfully acted. As Kay, Jodhi May ranges between exhilaration and despair with harrowing conviction and intensity … Richard Coyle succeeds in the hard task of making goodness interesting as her devoted partner; and there is strong support from Celia Imrie as Kay’s long-suffering mother and Paul Hilton as her apparently ruthless brother. Nevertheless I find it impossible warmly to recommend a play that is at once irritatingly arty and terminally depressing.”
Henry Hitchings in the Evening Standard (three stars) – “Kay is poignantly realised by Jodhi May, an actor whose wonderfully expressive face and tonal range make her ideal as this mercurial character. May's nuanced performance is matched by an articulate one from Richard Coyle as her boyfriend John … Coyle switches from effortful joviality to tender concern, and May, described as the kite he's holding on to, flits from eloquent mania via cool resolve to snarling wretchedness. There's scrupulous work, too, from Paul Hilton as Kay's abrasive brother Sandy, and as their mother Celia Imrie manifests an ironclad severity. Jamie Lloyd's production strains for intensity … Whilst Haddon's writing has both darkness and zest, it often seems exaggeratedly rhetorical. There's humour and shrewd observation, but the narrative jumps around abruptly, and its philosophical allusions are clever rather than potent. Elements of the production don't work. The echoey amplification of some passages seems pretentious. The music is overblown. And at times the text feels like a commentary on its own gestures, uncomfortably self-conscious. Most perplexing, though, is David Leon as a grungy Jesus … His jarring presence is the mark of a play that teems with ideas yet lacks clarity.”
Disturbing, intense, bizarre: Mark Haddon’s 90-minute play, his first, is all of these and more. Despite being a sort of case history, which could have been dull, it’s also theatrically spellbinding.
A philosopher tells his brother-in-law that his wife is in the cellar. Or she may be in Oslo. She’s been ill. She’s a writer. And she’s met Jesus, who speaks with a Geordie accent. And at some point she’s pregnant.
The play jumps around in Jamie Lloyd’s clever and outstandingly well acted production, and it doesn’t aim for total narrative coherence. But nothing seems left out, or mysterious, by the end. Kay, the writer, is swept off her feet by Richard, the philosopher, talking about Nietzsche.
How promising does that sound? Kay’s brother is a businessman who dares her, in their childhood, to stand on a chair with a noose round her neck.
Their father committed suicide. Their mother – played with swift interventionist hauteur by Celia Imrie – is protective to the point of suffocation. She also declares that Kay is ill, but we’re not sure why.
In Jodhi May’s extraordinary performance, which is both impetuous and determined, brimming with spirit and joy, Kay comes across as a writer who can’t cope but who is also completely normal. Is she bipolar, manic or depressive? Probably a bit of all three, nothing too unusual.
Her written pages flutter down through the broken ceiling of Soutra Gilmour’s design – and the Donmar audience has been brought in even closer to a rectangular platform area backed with transparent panels – and she reads us her fairytale of the girl and the monster.
The rare ability to get inside someone completely else’s head was apparent in Haddon’s brilliant novel about a 15 year-old autistic boy stranded by his separated parents, and his own imagination, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
He shows here that his writing talent has a theatrical dimension, too, in the brilliant performance of Jodhi May, the strange scene of Jesus (David Leon), who’s had sex with Kay, itemizing the fate of a corpse in a char-broiled Heaven, and the way in which Paul Hilton as the brother and Richard Coyle as the desperate philosopher square up on either side of a life they stake too many claims upon.
Well played, but the play felt like a first draft with some good moments but no clear message or point. - addicted to theatre
10 May 10
This first play by novelist Mark Haddon is about a young bi-polar woman’s life with her partner, brother and mother (and a guest appearance by Jesus!). It grabbed my attention at the outset and the drama built well for over an hour, then for some reason it lost me. The shifts in time aren’t always clear, though I think I managed to keep up. The main problem with the play its that it doesn’t seem to have a lot to say. There are terrific central performances from Jodhi May and Richard Coyle and Jamie Lloyd’s staging is excellent, but I left feeling that it was a lot of talent given a few ideas to work with rather than a finished play. I think Haddon should have tried it out somewhere with a lower profile; it doesn’t do him or the Donmar any good to showcase what seems to me like work-in-progress. - Gareth James
27 Apr 10
Towards the end of a surprisingly long 90 minutes the thought ocurred that Mark Haddon had chosen to construct his play in a series of non-chronological scenes because he had been unable to write a coherent narrative on such a potentially strong subject. As a consequence there is no sense of the development of the relationship between John and his apparently disturbed wife Kay and absolutely no sense of the rage building which leads to the outcome (which is revealed at the start of the play). Even in such a short running time there are also several scenes which have almost no relevance to the story and one which seems to suggest that childhood trauma could have been the cause of Kay's illness when everything else points to a genetic illness. Mark Shenton has pointed out that the brilliant Broadway musical Next to Normal deals far more effectively with the harrowing story of a family coping with a wife and mother afflicted with bipolar disorder (plus it has a great rock score). Hopefully the WoS gossip comes to fruition and London audiences get the opportunity to see one of the most extraordinary shows I have seen in years. Meanwhile Polar Bears is a rare disappointment at the Donmar. It's still my favourite London theatre but it's also about time they did something about their awful programmes. The price went up to £3 some while ago but there is almost nothing to read apart from cast biographies - they should be ashamed of such a shoddy product which is woefully short of the Donmar's standard in everything else they do. - David Baxter
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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