CityLife

Haunted

ANTICIPATION was high for this World Premiere of a brand-new play written specifically for the multi-award winning actress Brenda Blethyn by the great Irish novelist Edna O’Brien, described by none other than the Pulitzer Prize winning American novelist Philip Roth as "the most gifted woman now writing in English".

But Blethyn and her co-stars – Niall Buggy and Beth Cooke – rise to the challenge with bravura performances in a play which is quite as haunting yet strange and elusive as its title suggests.

Buggy, making his debut at the Exchange but a familiar figure from stage and screen (including the film of Mamma Mia!), plays the quixotic Mr. Berry, a man haunted by memories of two women in his life.

Firstly, there’s the redoubtable Mrs Berry (Brenda Blethyn, returning to the Exchange after working with director Braham Murray on Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie).

Her husband’s view of her is summed up by the rosebush he’s planted for her – it is, he impishly informs us, “sturdy, with no scent but remarkable thorns!”

When Hazel, a captivating young woman, played by Cooke (previously seen at the Exchange in Three Sisters and The Children’s Hour), enters his life, he is immediately beguiled.

Elocution lessons

His desperation to ensure her return causes him to start secretly giving away his wife's clothes to her in exchange for elocution lessons.

But as Mrs. Berry searches for an explanation for her fast-diminishing wardrobe, harsh reality and everyday dreams are on a disastrous collision course. 

This is a world of quiet suburban desperation, where, as O’Brien notes, each of the characters is “contriving their different dances against an existential loneliness” and where love both binds them together and sets them apart.

It’s a subtle and intriguing piece, which you very much suspect would repay more than one viewing but in which the performances alone should prove more than adequate reward for the more casual theatre-goer.

Haunted is at the Royal Exchange until Saturday, June 13.

Tweet