Last night I had Rosamund Pike’s stunning beauty, endless energy and confident stage presence all to myself for 1 hour 40 minutes, no break, at the Wyndham Theatre.
The experience left me drained and exhausted. I can’t remember breathing or blinking much during the whole show to make sure I did not miss a single word, a gesture, or a grimace.
The play starts with Rosamund’s character Jessica Parks doing her job as a crown court judge. A treat for anybody involved in a legal profession in the UK, I count myself among that crowd.
And then it gets real, it gets lyrical and it gets comedic, it gets mundane, and everyday, and it gets marital and suffocatingly motherly, whilst Rosamund Jessica keeps talking, and talking and talking, explosively, passionately, relentlessly, whilst at the same time setting the table, running around the playground, getting changed for a dinner party, washing up, having sex with a guitar, no not really, just a clever use of a guitar neck whilst faking an orgasm.
This carried on for a while, and it had already tired me out somewhat, even though it seemed to be going nowhere in particular, and then the OMG moment dawned on me, the Oh My God, he…, realisation crept up upon me, I thought momentarily, was I the last one in the audience to have caught on to this? No matter, I got there, and then I watched the inevitable unravelling of it all, and it was ever so sad and powerful and I wish it had gone on for longer, but there was nothing left to go on, so the lights went out.
Jessica was flanked by her husband and son. Initially, the two men felt no more than living props, moving quietly around her, but as the plot progressed, they came into their own.
Cormac McAlinden who plays Jessica’s son Harry, is a name to watch. His take on goofy teenager sleepwalking around the kitchen was brilliant throughout, and when it all fell apart, his final outburst of a monologue was truly disturbing.
I’d say, if you have a spare evening between now and the end of this run sometime in June, go see it.
Ania Heasley 