Kristin Scott Thomas and Lily James star in Penelope Skinner’s searingly funny and passionate new play, directed by Ian Rickson.
Elaine (Kristin Scott Thomas) a reclusive and talented actress, disappears in mysterious circumstances. 30 years later, she finally feels ready to tell her story – summoning Kate, a young film executive (Lily James), to her remote Cornish home to assist with her glorious comeback.
But who really controls the stories we tell, and how we get to tell them? Will these women own their narrative, or will it be swept away from them at any given moment?
A story for our times, playing for a strictly limited season from 17 Oct – 23 Dec at the Harold Pinter Theatre.
__Assisted Performances__
Captioned - 18th November 2.30pm
Audio-Described - 30th November, 7.30pm
BSL Interpreted - TBC
James, not a natural stage actress, gives one of her best performances here, deeply felt and relatable. Scott Thomas revels in the wacky Elaine, arriving in fur coat and swimming costume, throwing hilarious shapes to a dance track and play-acting her trauma for laughs. The actress has always excelled at flintiness, and she uses it now to refuse her character’s own tragedy, thus making her by far the most arresting thing on stage, and conjuring, in the play’s finest moments, a sense that anything could happen. Her keenness to throw Kate’s husband off a cliff makes you think she could just do just that.
Very occasionally, a play comes along that is so weirdly inept that you don’t quite know how to respond. If you were to stumble across Penelope Skinner’s new drama in a thinly populated corner of the Edinburgh Fringe, you would put it down as an undergrad experiment. To find it in the West End, with Kristin Scott Thomas and Lily James in the lead roles, is bizarre.
2023 | West End |
West End |
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