Leaves of Glass by Philip Ridley. Park 90, 13 Clifton Terrace, London N4. 19 Jan to 10 February 2024.

Duration: 1hr 15mins (no interval)

5****: William Russell.

“That ‘other country’ that is the past devastatingly exposed.”

Max Harrison’s devastating production of Philip Ridley’s play staged last year at the Park has returned for a second deserved run. First seen in 2007 at the Soho Theatre the play, which is about memory and how things become altered to suit what people want them to have been, has lost none of its power and performed in the round in Park Theatre’s smaller auditorium has an ideal home. It is only at the end we learn just what the title means and it hits home like a hammer blow. That something awful happened in the past is pretty clear from the start but it is not what one thinks. Steven (Ned Costello) is having a bad day. His younger brother Barry (Joseph Porter), a failed artist, is having a crisis about something; his wife Debbie (Katie Eldred) thinks he is having an affair, and his mother Liz (Kacey Ainsworth) is upset over plans for her to move from the family home to a flat where they could more easily look after her. Steven, who has a business cleaning unwanted graffiti, occasionally employs his brother, who has a history of drink and drugs,, to help him out as a good elder brother should do. They fight, remember their dead Father, his funeral, the friendly man who consoled them all. But the fights are not just friendly rough and tumbles, but something more. What was it about the exhibition of Barry’s paintings which came to a sudden end? Why was Liz so angry about them? Why did his career never take off? Why is his relationship with Debbie so close? Why are his paintings and drawings discovered in the move from the family home suddenly so dangerous? Liz, who is every inch the devoted matriarch, explains anything she does not like as being a case of “the fluey bug” which can be cured if people just calm down and take their medicine. Slowly the layers of how each of them would like things to have been are stripped away – it is a bit like paring some apparently delicious fruit only to find at its heart a kernel as hard and relentless as stone. The past is a very different country for the brothers and their mother and when at the end she remembers, while looking at some of the things she treasures, how pleased she was the memory, innocent in itself and true, discloses why the brothers remember things quite differently. I was away last year when this production – the play has been regularly revived over the years - was first staged at Park Theatre but the accolades heaped on it then were clearly well deserved. It could hardly be better staged or performed.

Cast

Kacey Ainsworth – Liz.

Ned Costello – Steven.

Katie Eldred – Debbie.

Joseph Potter – Barry.

Creatives

Director – Max Harrison.

Set & Costume Designer – Kit Hinchcliffe.

Lighting Designer – Alex Lewer.

Sound Designer – Sam Glossop.

Fight & Intimacy Coordinator – Lawrence Carmichael.

Movement Consultant – Sam Angell.

Dialect Coach – Mary Howland.