The Family Reunion

T.S. Eliot’s 1939 verse play conjures up another era and a different way of life in an atmospheric revival, staged as the centrepiece of the Donmar’s festival commemorating the work of the American born playwright. It’s quintessentially English, with the sands of time draining remorselessly into the corners of Bunny Christie’s gloomy, wood-panelled country house set where the aristocratic Monchesey family has gathered to celebrate the birthday of the steely, controlling matriarch (Gemma Jones) and the anticipated arrival of her three sons. But it also draws on the tradition of Greek tragedy with a quartet of antiquated relatives forming a bemused and amusing chorus trying to make sense of events, and the three Eumenides (here reimagined as ghostly little boys) pursuing Sam West’s tortured Harry. Returning home after an 8 year absence and the death of the wife whom he professes to have pushed overboard, he cannot escape the guilt within which follows him wherever he goes.

The heightened, poetic language veers from the totally obscure to the eerily disturbing, but the quality of the acting and the bleak intensity of Jeremy Herrin’s stylish production more than compensate for the frustratingly abstruse and seemingly nonsensical passages.

Donmar to 10^th Jan