The Wanderers at Marylebone Theatre – review

First seen off-Broadway in 2023, The Wanderers was originally conceived by author Anna Ziegler (best known here for the Nicole Kidman vehicle Photograph 51, soon to be filmed with Natalie Portman) as two separate plays centred on married Jewish couples. Fusing together the stories of contrasting pairings – Hasidic newlyweds Schmuli and Esther in the 1970s and modern Brooklyn-based writers Abe and Sophie – pays potent emotional dividends though, and provides fascinating contrasts. Deceptively large in scope, although intimate in scale, this is a dense, rich play about a lot more than just four people in varying states of anguish, and the revealing of the connection between the central quartet is like a tiny dramatic detonation when it occurs.

The tension between living in faith and connecting with the world changing around you is interesting, dramatic territory, and Ziegler explores it with compassion, humour and a strong sense of the theatrical. We first encounter Schmuli and Esther, awkward on their first night together (“So how did you enjoy our wedding?” she wryly enquires), before seeing their relationship break down over time as Esther (Katerina Tannenbaum, heart-rending) finds her feet as a woman and desires something beyond the oppressive traditional life meted out to her.

Then there’s the contemporary pair, also struggling with their identities, secular and religious, collectively and individually: Abe is a Philip Roth wannabe, self-obsessed and a mass of neuroses, while Sophie, who’s half African-American as well as Jewish, seems comparatively patient and well-adjusted, but troubled by not being as professionally successful as her husband. Their interactions are sharply funny but with an undertow of pain – at one point Sophie remarks “I will never understand why you want to raise our kids in a religion you hate” and Abe responds, “because that’s what Jews do” – and further informed by an online chat relationship he has developed with Julia (Anna Popplewell) a famous actress who came to one of his readings.

Each character yearns for something just out of reach, and what that big want is changes over the passage of time. Longing runs all the way through the play like a throbbing, engorged vein, and Ziegler delivers a major plot twist near the conclusion that strains credulity but is undeniably delicious.

American-based Ukrainian director Igor Golyak supplies a unique vision in a cool, spare production that, if you tune into it, becomes emotionally overwhelming. The performances are painstakingly detailed and truthful but Golyak surrounds them with a theatrical magic that quietly astounds.

With set designer Jan Papplebaum, he creates a black box dominated by a see-through wall where characters eavesdrop or communicate across decades, and upon which words and images can be scrawled. It’s a space where the snow falls perpetually, where a white sheet can be a wedding veil, a baby, a hospital bed… and a hat and coat on a stand can signify an authoritative father, and where objects occasionally materialise out of thin air. It’s a strikingly beautiful staging, enhanced by Anna Drubich’s exquisite musical score and Alex Musgrave’s moody lighting.

Tannenbaum’s radiant Esther is a revelation and Eddie Toll is equally impressive as the man torn between tradition and admiration for his forward-thinking wife. An electric charge runs through their scenes together that reaches its apotheosis in a second-act sequence, staged without the characters ever looking at each other, where he desperately tries to win her back: it’s deeply moving. Alexander Forsyth and Paksie Vernon are terrific as the flawed yet likeable modern couple, and Popplewell is elegant perfection as the elusive Julia with whom Abe becomes unhealthily obsessed.

Ziegler is at the top of her game here. Her characters get so much wrong, yet there are no villains, nor are there heroes or heroines. The dialogue is elegant, amusing but raw when it needs to be, and the sense of religion impacting on ordinary lives transcends the Jewish specificity into something truly universal. “Your writing is sort of luminous,” says Julia to Abe, and that statement applies equally to this.