Theatreguide.London
www.theatreguide.london
The Theatreguide.London Review
The Knot of the Heart
Almeida Theatre Spring 2011
David Eldridge
practically challenges any reviewer to avoid the word 'harrowing' in
discussing his new drama, charting as it does the descent of a well-off
professional woman into heroin addiction.
A popular TV
presenter, she begins with an occasional snort in her dressing room, but
by Scene Two is shooting up and by Scene Three is being resuscitated in
A&E, and she ends the act with her first trip to rehab. Act Two
follows the tentative and uneven voyage upward to an always fragile
recovery.
But this is no mere documentary, and Eldridge’s real interest is in what
goes on around the addiction, particularly the addict’s relations with
her loving mother and wary sister.
That the addict is dishonest, emotionally manipulative and almost
ferally aware of her prey’s vulnerabilities is not surprising, though
Eldridge shows her playing them mercilessly in a couple of particularly
uncomfortable scenes.
What is new, shocking and totally believable is the way they play her,
and the way their emotional needs and neuroses enable her addiction and
threaten her recovery.
The mother, more than a bit of an alcoholic herself, has her own motives
for denying the extent of her daughter’s danger. In the very first scene
she actually helps her daughter light up, convincing herself it’s just a
harmless relaxation, like her own ever-present glass of wine.
She takes the full-blown heroin addict into her home, pays for her drugs
and even goes out to buy them for her, in order to keep her daughter off
the streets.
But at the
same time, we realise, she is infantilising the grown woman, keeping her
dependent because she, the mother, needs to play Mommy more than she
needs her daughter’s recovery.
The cool, practical sister is not so easily taken in, but her moral
superiority is somewhat undercut when we realise she is acting out
childhood resentments of Mommy’s favourite, and the line between tough
love and vindictive cruelty proves difficult for her to
distinguish.
Of course there is a Big Family Secret, which turns out to be not quite
as overpowering when told as it was when hidden, though it does -
perhaps a bit too neatly - explain some of the family dynamics.
In a programme note, Eldridge says that among his motivations in writing
the play were the desire to create a strong female character not defined
by her relationship with a man, and to provide a good role for actress
Lisa Dillon, and he has certainly succeeded in both aims.
He makes the central character believably eloquent and clear-headed
enough to be able to explain her experience as she has it, verbalising
both the attractions and horrors of addiction, and then, particularly
movingly, the newly-discovered priorities that guide her through her
rocky recovery.
(A minor
weakness of the play is that Eldridge has to create a couple of
encounters, such as one with a shrink, that are too obviously just
occasions to let the woman say out loud what she’s feeling.)
Almost never offstage, Lisa Dillon chillingly conveys the intensity,
intelligence and extreme emotional fragility of the woman, and is
particularly moving as this all-but-destroyed psyche fights her way back
to something resembling health.
In the very
last seconds of the play she answers a question about her feelings by
saying she is ’content’, her flickering eyes making clear that that does
not necessarily mean ’confident’.
As strong as Dillon’s performance is, I would give acting honours here
to Margot Leicester as the mother, precisely because the character is
never as self-aware as Dillon’s, and so the actress has to show us
things her character doesn’t know.
She does this
so sensitively that, for all the woman’s role as enabler and therefore
potential destroyer of both her children, you may well find yourself
sympathetic toward one who honestly thinks she’s being unselfish and
loving.
The sister is really more of a plot device than a fully-drawn character,
but Abigail Cruttenden shows us all her complexities and makes them
convincingly part of a unified and sympathetic person.
Sophie Stanton
as a supportive counsellor and Kieran Bow as a string of characters
ranging from pusher to psychologist provide solid backing.
It should be obvious, but needs to be said, that when an entire cast
embody and present their characters so beautifully, much of the credit
must go to director Michael Attenborough, adding another to his long
list of successes at this theatre.
Gerald Berkowitz
|
Receive
alerts
every time we post a new review
|