Perhaps it is Nell Leyshon’s beautifully observed script or Mike Britton’s wonderful set or perhaps consummate performances from the ensemble but something transports the Hampstead audience to the failing orchard of a crumbling Somerset farmhouse.
There is a feeling that in watching this play, the audience is among the overgrown apple trees spying upon a dying, uneducated family trying to make sense of a changing, complicated world.
Lucy Bailey’s direction utilises the space perfectly and sets a pace that gently unpicks the story, allowing the characters to breathe and laying bare the truth lying unspoken deep within a broken family.
At the heart of that family is Irene and her retarded brother Len. Shattered by the death of her husband, she grimly holds on to her ground-down son and bitterly resents the relatively modern daughter who managed to escape her clutches. Anna Calder-Marshall gives a resolute performance that anchors the whole piece. Alan Williams as her brother perfects Len’s childlike air.
Peter Hamilton Dyer never allows the son, Roy, to look at anyone as he speaks but allows his bottled-up anger to simmer, while Helen Schlesinger gives a natural, full-bodied performance as his feisty twin sister Brenda.
Kate Lonergan, as Linda - the family friend, who is the cause of a 20-year rift - allows the hurt of her ostracising to bleed through her character’s thick skin.
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Production information can change over the run of the show.
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