Goodbye to All That

Synopsis

Frank has been married for forty years. Three years ago he fell in love. This taut and tender play asks if it's ever too late to start again?

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 28 February 2012

The title of Luke Norris’ impressive debut play, which launches the Young Writers Festival at the Royal Court, is already taken by Robert Graves for his famous First World War autobiography.

But Norris’ play can claim its own share of bitterness and poignancy in the portrait of 70 year-old Frank (Roger Sloman), whose 40 year-old marriage is blown apart by his affair with the glamorous widow of an old colleague at the Romford golf club.

Then Frank has a stroke and the second part of a 75-minute play shows a struggle by his grandson David (Alexander Cobb) and the lover, Rita (Linda Marlowe), to remove Frank from a council home into private health care - with Rita’s money.

This movement - represented in snappy scenes played out on Tom Piper’s white, slab-like design, with carpets and furnishing at the side - isolates the wife, Iris (Susan Brown) even more. There’s a thunderbolt, too, concerning what happen...

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Latest User Review

steveatplays - 3 March 2012:

Of the two productions currently at the Royal Court featuring two women fighting over a man in a hospital bed, this is the more urgent. That is because this play's Frank (Roger Sloman) is not in the hospital bed at the beginning of the play, and has a chance of getting out of it. Also, this is because the women fighting over him in this play (Royal Court Upstairs) are in the throws of the emotions which lead them to fight, whereas in "In Basildon" (Royal Court Downstairs), the two women are in bitter aftermath of those emotions. Both plays are good, but this one hurts more, as there is not only more urgency in it, but there is more cruelty. All the performances in this are brilliant: Roger Sloman is utterly believable as Frank, and the moment his health takes a turn for the worse is harrowing; Linda Marlowe is maternal and tender as his mistress, Rita; Alexander Cobb is heated and barrel-voiced, but it is Susan Brown as his put upon wife Iris who gives the most exceptional memorable performance. She plays a betrayed wife with an enigmatic laissez faire and indignance, which hides wells of scorching bitterness beneath the surface. What she does and what she doesn't do, and how she does and doesn't do it, is gasp-inducing. I won't be forgetting that performance and I won't be forgetting this play....

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